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FIFTH ESTATE

Fifth EstateWinter 2013, Vol. 47, No. 3 [#388]

With the defeat of the White ChristianNationalist Party in the U.S. presidential

election, liberals and progressives areunderstandably relieved that the politics ofracism, misogyny, xenophobia, and the restof the right-wing panoply were rejected byAmerican voters, even if only by a fairly smallpercentage. We share that sense, but holdno illusions about the second term of BarackObama containing any possibility for authentichope or change, or even mild reform.

Not a minute after the election resultswere announced, the two parties of theruling class began talking about the need to“compromise“ on questions of the budget andsocial programs. Read correctly, this meansthe continuing transfer of wealth to the 1%,austerity policies for the remainder of thepopulation, and maintenance of the empireabroad.

What is needed is the creation ofautonomous movements to resist theseattacks, but as important, is the building ofstructures that operate outside the confinesof capitalism and begin a reconstruction of ahuman-oriented society.

This issue on Education offers severalmodels of the latter, particularly the alternativeschools on a small scale, but also the resistanceof the Quebec students and their allies totuition hikes which created a mass movementof resistance.

Many thanks to all of those who participatedin making this issue possible from readers andsubscribers, to those who volunteered theirtime and talents, and to our Sustainers whoseextra support is so important.

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sxwsiicresr 1

Woodstock Music_Festival, 1969. The Fifth Estate was in its fourth year of publication and was partof counter-culture music scene as much as the anti-war and resistance movements of the times.The festival gave the then~tabloid paper press passes and bought a full-page ad.

ContentsOnthe CoverStephen Goodfellow's art once again graces our front page as it has in numerousprevious issues. The Non Serviam ball is also his creation. See goodfelloweb.comMagazine design: Zach Kozdron behance.net/zachkozdron

5 Anarchism and Violenceor State Violence?

7 Propaganda of the Deed

8. Taking it OFF the streets!From Ritual to Resistance

10. wJohn Zerzan in London

11 VietnamGucci Meets Revolution

13 Art in Support of Prisoners

22 The Sea

25-42 Special Section onAnarchism 8 Education

What Do We Learn in SchoolA Short History of SchoolsAnti-Authoritarian Personalities

8 Standard SchoolsQuebec student strikeThe OrchestraUnschooling 8 Free SchoolsNola Free School NetworkFrontlines of Educational RevoltToronto's Free School

14 Grand jurytargets anarchists 36 Mexico

16 Life in the Body DumpThe Realities of Tourism

Kelly Pflug-Back from prison 43-46 Reviews

18 Operation 8Terror Down Under

20 Cleveland 4

William Gibsonby Paul J. Comeau

Miranda Mellisby Penelope Rosemont

Food Not BombsInvented crime claims victims by Dave Not Bombs

21 DronesDeath by Spreadsheet

44 WWADWhat Would Anarchists D0?

Send letters via email to fe@fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220Fl FT H E STAT E All formats accepted including typescript 8 handwritten. Letters may be edited for length.

LettersOur readers respondFlorida I(ollective

I'm writing on behalf of our small andgrowing I<ollective in northeast Florida.

We are focusing our grass-roots effortson organizing community projects withfriends throughout the state and arepreparing to launch a new project focusingon distributing literature. With our projects,and our lives, we embrace cooperativemodels and combat the capitalist mentality.

Our project begins with an old schoolbus. We are converting it into a mobileinfo-shop which we call The Radical BookMobile. It will be a mobile distributioncenter of promotional/educational materialfor local and regional interest groups; ourown printed material and a variety of newand used books.

We intend to provide access to literaturebecause we believe in the power of aneducated populous. Capital should not bean obstacle for educating oneself and so wewill ask only for a suggested donation forthe items we stock. We will always welcomebarter, trade, and even gift to insure peoplehave access to the knowledge they seek.

Similarly in our build out of the bus, weare using salvaged materials and donationsfrom people who want to support theproject.

While we are gathering materials,merchandise and building the book mobilewe are holding info-fairs every weekendat our kollective house in Jacksonville.We are distributing print media from theSlingshot Collective in Berkeley, the EarthFirst! Journal from Lake Worth, Florida,the Fifth Estate from Detroit, several otherindependent publishers, and have donatedour personal libraries to get momentumgoing. We'd like to develop workingrelationships with other publishers andcollectives and distribute works and titleswhich may be available.

Please let us know if you're interestedin helping us get started and how best toopen the channels of contribution andcommunication. We can be reached viaemail from kairoskollective@riseup.net, ourproject website is burnpilebooks.wordpress. We received the graphic and story See ‘LETTERS,’ page 4

com, 700 East Union St., Box 10, JacksonvilleFl 32206, or call us at (904) 701-Dolt.

SiddhiRiverside (Jacksonville), Fla.

Portrait Origin

The final page of Fifth Estate's Spring2012 issue featured a drawing of a mannamed Coyote, who wrote upon it of his lifeexperience as a member of the commune andintentional community Twin Oaks, located inthe White Oak Forest, east of Appalachia.

Initially unbeknownst to FE‘s editorsthis piece occurred as a “Portrait-Story,"specifically part of a series of over 600originals called “Voices for Appalachia - APortrait-Story Project Written and Narratedby Hundreds“ (active 16 months altogetherbetween March 2008 and November 2009.

The collection is largely about residents‘folk, family and bioregional connection withtheir land, the resistance movement againstmountain range removal coal “mining” andtowards a future beyond reckless extractionindustries.

See voiceforappalachia.org.Of interest to anti-authoritarians in a

climate-destabilized world, “The Post-KatrinaPortraits: Written and Narrated by Hundreds,“(active 13 consecutive months, September2005 onward) largely shows a statelessdisaster relief effort.

And, just in case one believes thatovert self-determinationist expressioncan only form as reaction to grievance:facesomadtown.org.

Also, the little known Black Bloc Portraitsalmost immediately precursored (amongstother works) what became formalized as ThePortrait-Story Project: see dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/115903/index.php.

Given explicit grassroots political will,such a broadly participatory art and storydocumentary project could emerge anywhere.See portraitstoryproject.org for reifyingdetails.

Informed inquiries may go to wanderer@riseup.net.

The Portrait-Story Projectbottomliner

Fifth Estate Note: Thank you for clearingup the origin of the graphic and story weprinted, and for its history.

directly from Coyote who is a subscriberand supporter of the Fifth Estate. He didn'tsubmit it for inclusion in our issue, butwe did so without mentioning it to himas somewhat of an intended surprise. It'sgood to know that it is part of a much largerproject.

Zerzan in London

I made it to the talk that John Zerzan gaveat London's Raven Row Gallery in August.[See article on John's talk on P. 10.]

It was interesting and generally wellreceived from what I could tell, althoughI expect most that came were familiarwith his work. There were a number ofinteresting questions afterwards that gotbuilt on from the talk. I might try and getback there and have a look at the Fifth Estateback issues if the show is still running!

Quite strange that there was so littleprotest around the Olympics, either againstthe event itself or just to use that as anopportunity in terms of coverage. There wasa huge police operation to stop any formof protest, and known protesters may havebeen sent threatening letters before thegames started.

The security operation behind the gameswas quite a scary prospect, including thelevel of surveillance. Apparently, they havelampposts installed with mics that can pickup specific conversations. George Orwelleat your heart out!

I don't know in any detail what theanarchist response was, as I am fairlyrecently new to these ideas myself. Perhapsthe mood of national optimism swept theanarchist circles as well. If so, lets hope itdoesn't last too long!

Tim FranceyLondon

The Free is Free!

Congrats on your excellent Summer2012 issue, especially the Summer Readingsections. I noticed no anarchist novelswere included; a pity as I'm promoting TheFree, 2012 edition, which would have beenperfect.

Fifth Estate gave the novel, set duringan anarchist revolution in the collapse ofcapitalism, a Wow! review when it first came

FIFTH ESTATE

Lettersout in 1986. It was written by E.B. Maple,who I understand is still in your collectiveunder his real name.

The new version of this anarcha-feministadventure, which is a free download linkedto a blog on the theme, is twice as long andleads us, with the neighbourhood collectivesand free unions, right through capitalistcollapse, climate chaos, and a violent, joyful,sexy and often hilarious social revolutionand into a budding money-free world.

While yet to go viral, The Free has beenacclaimed on its blog, thefreeonline.wordpress.com, with over 100,000 visitors,mostly to the relating themes, plus 2,600Friends of The Free on its Farcebook page.facebook.com/thefree.mikegilli You can free-download also for e-book and phone readerson the blog.

Some academic anarchists scoff at novels,but this one is perfect for learning and studyas well. As all the classic ideas ta|<e place inthe background story, they are referenced tothe relevant books you can link to, and alsofree download from the Anarchist Library.

So, if you're curious, especially if you're awage or mortgage slave, or if you're femaleor gay, check it out. The Free will clarify yourplans on what to do as our crazy system andmistreated climate fall apart around us!

All the best and hope you're still revolting,

M.GillilandBarcelona

Walker Lane responds: Mike is being kindNot having fiction reviews in our edition onAnarchist Summer Reading is a hole in whatis available for not just our ideas, but forwhat emotions the genre elicits in a reader. Iread The Free and wrote the review in thesepages over 25 years ago, yet many of itsscenes still stand out vividly in my mind. Ihighly recommend it.

Viability of Violence

Greetings from the Texas gulag! Asalways, I thoroughly enjoyed your superbmagazine and read the Spring 2012 editioncover to cover before passing it around tomy literate comrades

However, I must take strong exceptionto John Zerzan‘s take on the viability ofviolence as a tactic in the promotion of

revolutionary values [see “Vagaries of theLeft"].

Like it or not, the American people,and, indeed, most people of the Westernworld, have been pointedly conditionedsince infancy to view private property assacrosanct. Destruction of that property,even in a worthy cause, and used as apropaganda tool, is almost inevitablycounterproductive and only serves toalienate the forces for good.

Violence can be a great tool when youhave superior numbers and arms, but until acritical number of sleeping people wake upto the predatory and unsustainable natureof capitalism-imperialism, the reactionaryforces will continue to use it because itworks in tandem with the corporate ownedmedia's spin machine.

That photo of the California campus coppepper spraying unarmed, peaceful studentprotesters did more to wake up peoplethan a thousand smashed windows. Zerzanshould ask himself, if violence promotesprogress, why do reactionary forces useagents provocateurs when violence isn'tpresent?

Our hope lies solely in the waking upof “the hundredth monkey" to our toxicsituation. Violence only prolongs the sleep.

Yours for a peaceful revolution,

Richard OstranderHuntsville, Texas

John Zerzan responds: I doubt that theimage of people passively being pepper-sprayed did much of anything to emboldenor inspire others to resistance. I admire theircourage and, yes, it exposed the pigs, butdoes playing the victim really help us moveforward?

There is really no way around the moveto targeted property damage, as I see it.Property is sacrosanct but the move toactual resistance is necessary. We must go

through that barrier, overcome the initialantipathy.

ELF and ALF actions have beeneffective, it seems to me, especially whenaccompanied by lucid communiquésexplaining the necessity of physical attackson oppressive targets.

Sticking with play-the-protest gametactics that obey the rules is no substitutefor moving forward in real ways. I don't seeproperty destruction as violent, by the way.Can inanimate objects, say, a building, beviolated?

Maybe quite a few more than you thinkare ready for break-out tactics, will respectresistance over obedience.

Homophobic Lyrics

When I recorded my album "Dissent" inDecember 2011, I wanted it to representthe philosophical underpinnings that makeup my anarchism. What I did not want it torepresent was any form of bigotry.

Unfortunately, my hip-hop backgroundand my anarchism had not merged into acohesive whole (still trying to figure outhow best to employ the latter with theformer), as is evidenced in the song, “HateMe," which Paul J. Comeau, in his review of“Dissent” in the Summer 2012 FE, chose topinpoint for my use of homophobic slurs todenigrate those I am critical of.

I took Paul's review pretty hard at firstand felt like I was being attacked. Naively,I had trouble seeing that even thoughhomophobic slurs are often heard in hip-hop music (the clichéd, “everybody says it")they are still homophobic slurs, same as anethnic or racial slur.

Since I am not a homophobe or antigayI should not employ words that are. I wasalso upset because this was my first reviewin an anarchist publication. I was not tooexcited that my first impression would bethat of a gay-basher. But, I do not think thatwas overtly stated by Paul and was more mebeing liber-defensive.

I would agree that “there is no place inanarchism for homophobia." It took thislittle encounter to see that this applied tomyself as well and that the language I wasusing was inherently homophobic, whether Ihad realized it or not.

SpanishBrooklyn, N.Y.

FIFTH ESTATE

Anarchist Violence or State Vilolence?Anarchists are portrayed as the boogeyman by the media, but governments arethe real source of organized violence.BY WALKER LANE

he question ofviolence as a revolutionary tactic is neither new norTunfairly associated with anarchists, although debate has recently

emerged over its use by Black Blocs during mass demonstrations,including Occupy events [See FE, Summer 2012; Iohn Zerzan, “The Vagariesofthe Left"]

However, many are quick toinsist that breaking bankwindowsor torching police cars doesn'tconstitute violence but rathershould more precisely be describedas property damage or politicalvandalism [Hey, the original Vandalscanied out a final blow to a prettynasty empire].

Violence is what the copsemploy against not just Black Blocparticipants, who are usually fleetoffoot enough to escape it, butfrequently in random attacks againstpeople at demonsnations who arecommitting neitherviolence norproperty damage. Or, provocateursare employed to unleash the cops onprotesters. Violence from the officialprotectors ofpropertyhas been sosevere that demonstrators have beenseverely injured and even killed.

Black Blocs at largedemonstrations, such as at anti-warrallies or meetings ofthe imperialchieftains ofthe G20 countries, areusually comprised ofyoung peopleWh° either where SP°ma11e°uS1Y From the Black Bloc Portraits series; depictions of those who wear masks for political

At a demonstration in Detroit in 2000 protesting a meeting oftheOrganization ofAmerican States across the border in Windsor, Ontario, onethousand marchers were met by almost as many police who were orderedto wear long sleeved shirts in the Iune heat claiming they had receivedintelligence that demonstrators were preparing to splash acid on their arms.The local papers featured headlines howling that “anarchists from Seattle"were coming to Detroit to “btun the city down.’' All of the marches were

peaceful.During the 2003

anti-Free Trade Area ofthe Americas protestsin Miami, the copsshuttered the entiredowntown area for twoweekdays and broughtout armaments enoughto fight offan army.

Bizarre SceneThe bizarre scene,

in one case, of tmionretirees, some inwheelchairs andothers using walkers,marching by armoredpersonnel carriersmanned by battle-ready helmetedcops with .30 calibermachine guns at thereadywas almostlaughable if itwasn'tfor the fact that this hasbecome an acceptablestance for the cops

and are drawn to one another, orwith reasons, drawn in charcoal and graphite, with captions written by those who posed for and their state and mediasome prior planning, attack Symbols of the series. See “Letters"on page 2 for links and visit portraitstoryproject.org for more. app1'OVedViOlence_the state and/or capitalism.

Upsurge ofMilitant TacticsSometimes, the actions of the Black Bloc are only a footnote to largermarches, but on other occasions, such as the 1999 Seattle anti-WTO actions,it was a relatively small ntunberbreaking windows at Starbucks that thrustthem into public consciousness and launched the most recent upsurge ofmilitant tactics against the institutions ofcapitalism.

While Seattle set in motion dozens ofsubsequent actions by black-clad militants, it also allowed the creation of an official hysteria which isconveniently used as an excuse for the militarization ofthe police andjustification for brutal tactics ofsuppression ofeven peaceful demonstratorswhere no Black Bloc is present.

Over-reaction though itmaybe, store owners and bankers expect the police to keep their shop windowsintactwhile those who want to bust them up have a different perspective on thesanctityofproperty.

Some in the Black Bloc enter the streets with a specific political perspective,while others maybe just expressing rage at the way society is constructed andthink “busting shit up” is a relatively reasonable response to those institutionswhich are responsible for the cturent state ofaffairs.

All societies are govemed by rules set by the dominate class and regulatewhat is permissible behavior regarding tenns ofsocial alteration. A politicalthrust, such as anarchism, that has as a goal the elimination ofthe basicdefinitions of this society and who sets them is obviously consideredillegitimate in the eyes of the rulers.

FIFTH ESTATE

D One strand of thought, sometimes implied orstated, is that ifyou dare to break one rule—suchas breaking awindow—the perpetrator is thatmuch more likely to have fewer qualms aboutbrealdng the fundamental rules.

Organizers ofwhat are designated as “peaceful,legal demonstrations" rage against the Black Blocor others who won't abide by their definition. Theycharge that the militants “hijack” their events,distort their message, give the cops an excuseto attack marchers, and cause the media to onlyfocus on political vandalism raflier than their illsto end a war or protest against some economic orsocial outrage.

There's undoubtedly truth in their complaints,butwithout the Black Bloc actions many protestevents would have gone unreported andunremembered.

Organizers of the Seattle anti-WTOdemonstration complained that the vandalismofa handful ofanarchists overshadowed the60,000 trade unionists, enviromnentalists andother peace and social justice activists thatparticipated in legal marches and non-violent civildisobedience.

This is true and it's not.Without the militant actions, it's doubtful

whether the larger marches and actions wouldhave even made the nightly news. Also, iscorporate media coverage the ultimate goal? Thatsomehow, ifwe appear on the corporate media for20 seconds to present a usually garbled messageofreform, let alone revolution, before the programgoes to a cormnercial for vinyl replacementwindows and the sportscaster returns withthe scores, we will have had a successfuldemonstration?

The Timid LeftCriticizing the BlackBloc or independent anarchisttrashingwill most probably be ignored by thosemost likely to carry it out. To them, to do so, onlymarks you as part ofthe timid leftwho lets the statedefine what is pemrissible. Complaining about theBlack Bloc is like shakingyour fist at the rain cloudswhich have ruinedyour picnic; it's beyond ourcontrol.

However, it seems that some questions needto be posed to those who want to go beyond theprescribed limits at large marches: Do those whoalter the nature ofa “legal, peaceful" event by theiractions bear any responsibility to the organizers .orothers attending a demonstration?

Do those who initiate militant actions have aresponsibility to those who are unaware that thetactics of a few may lead to a violent assault by thepolice? Is there a responsibilitywhen ratchetingup the use ofmilitant tactics that they may

increase repressiveness in general?Also, when the state repressive apparatus

weighs in against those taking part in militantactions—the cops on the street and the judicialand prison system—what are the effects on thosewho run afoul ofthem and on the communitiesfrom which they come?

Should those choosing militants acts considerthe consequences and responses required offriends, family, and comrades?

Should everyone be advised to nevercommit acts that could bring about detrimentalresults? This is certainly contrary to the advicerevolutionaries across the ages have heeded.

Only Damaging propertyActually, everyone from store owners to the

cops and the politicians ought to be thankful that

ofinvention.Followers ofLuigi Gallearri, mostly Italian

irmnigrants who read his Cronaca Sovversiva,in which he advocated direct action and armedresistance against the state, acted on his theoriesin a series ofbombings between 1914 and 1933.Galleanists fostered numerous attacks againstprominentAmerican ruling class figures andpolice, killing and injuring many.

The culmination ofan intense bombingcampaign arotmdWorld War I and its domesticrepression came when Mario Buda, a Galleanist,in 1920, drove a wagon filled with explosives ontoNewYork City's Wall Street which detonatedkilling 38 and wormding 148. Later, into the early1930s, revenge was sought for the judicial murderofGalleanists Sacco and Vanzetti with attemptson the lives ofthe trial judge, police, and prison

“...everyone from store owners to the cops and thepoliticians ought to be thankful that the Black Bloccenters its actions on property wreckage."the Black Bloc centers its actions on propertywreckage. In eras gone by, anarchists took amuch greater toll on the guardians and ownersofproperty and capital. The current Black Bloc,however, comport themselves with a dedication toonly damaging property.

Think of the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Squareincident where those fighting for the 8-hourday, led by anarchists, were urged in a leaflet,“Workingmen, Arm Yourselves and Appear inFull Force!" And, they did, including someone,nowwidely considered to be an anarchist, threwa bomb into the midst ofthe Chicago policewhere the blast and subsequent gunfire from bothsides resulted in the death ofseven cops and fourcivilians with scores wounded.

Throughout Europe, from the 1870s throughthe 1930s, anarchists often participated inPropaganda by the Deed, so-called exemplaryacts ofviolence against tyrants both for retaliatoryand agitational purposes. Kings, czars, politicians(including a U.S. president), religious figures, andcapitalists were the frequent targets, and fell at thehands ofanarchist assassins. These acts led to avivid association, aided by a sensationalist press,between anarchism and violence.

In the U.S., the image ofa dark, bearded man,dressed in black hat and clothing, canying around bomb with a lit fuse resonated with a nativepopulation fearful of foreign anarchists bent onviolence. And, this stereotype wasn't entirely bom

officials connected to the case.It should be realized, however, that those who

perpetrated violence against the rulers and theirminions weren't the madrnen portrayed in thecapitalist press during thatperiod. They actedwithin a context ofstate violence much greaterthan any toll exacted by the assassinations andbombings listed here.

Inter-imperialist SlaughterAnarchist actions were minor when compared

to the repression, massacres, wars, irnprisomnentand other outrages canied out by the stateagainst the working class. The body cormt fromall anarchist bombings would barely fill a hospitalward when compared to the inter-irnperialistslaughter ofWorld War I.

Anarchists were condemned by the press andpoliticians for advocafing violence to achievetheir ends. However, one finds calls for violentrepression ofstrikers in headlines and in speechesquite corrnnon place, and which were acted uponby cops, troops, and goons.

None ofthis is meant as a justification ofeitherviolence orvandalism; every person will haveto decide the efficacy ofsuch acts themselves.However, the late British anarchistVemon Richardsput forth the ethical imperative in Lessons oftheSpanish Revolution that an tmarmed person shouldnever be harmed.

FIFTH ESTATE

Propaganda of the DeedA chronology of anarchist violence

1892 — Alexander Berkman attempts to killAmerican industrialist Henry Clay Frick inretaliation for breaking the Homestead Strike.

1893 -Santiago Salvador throws two bombsinto a Barcelona theatre, killing twentypeople and injuring others.

1893 — Auguste Vaillant throws a nail bombin the French National Assembly. His lastwords before execution were “Death to theBourgeoisie! Long live Anarchy!"

1894- Emile Henry, to avenge Vaillant'sexecution, sets off a bomb in a café, killingone and injuring twenty. During his trial, hedeclares, “There are no innocent bourgeois."

1894 -Geronimo Caserio, seeking revengefor Vaillant and Henry, stabs to death thePresident of France, Sadi Carnot.

1897 - Michele Angiolillo shoots SpanishPrime Minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo,seeking vengeance for the imprisonment andtorture of revolutionaries.

1898 - Luigi Lucheni stabs to death EmpressElisabeth, the consort of Emperor FranzJoseph I of Austria-Hungary, in Geneva.

1900 — Gaetano Bresci shoots Umberto Idead, seeking revenge for a massacre inMilan.

1901 - Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. PresidentWilliam McKinley in Buffalo.

1902 — Gennaro Rubino attempts to kill KingLeopold II of Belgium.

1906 -Mateu Morral tries to kill King AlfonsoXIII of Spain and Princess Victoria Eugenie ofBattenberg after their wedding by throwing abomb into the wedding procession.

1909 —Sim6n Radowitzky assassinates theBuenos Aires chief of police..

1912 —Manuel Pardifias kills Spanish PrimeMinister José Canalejas in Madrid.

1913 - Alexandros Schinas shoots KingGeorge I of Greece dead.

1914 - A bomb being prepared for use atJohn D. Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown,New York explodes prematurely killing threeanarchists.

1914 — Followers of Luigi Galleani explodetwo bombs in New York City after policedisperse a protest by anarchists atRockefeller's home.

1916 - San Francisco Preparedness [for WWI]Day bombing. 10 persons killed;40 injured.Attributed to anarchists but never proven.

1917 - Nine policemen in Milwaukee killedwhen a time bomb left at a Catholic churchby Galleanists explodes at a police station.

1917 — Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, receives aGalleanist mail bomb (defused).

1917 — A servant of U.S. Senator Thomas W.Hardwick loses her hands from a Galleanistmail bomb.

1917 — Galleanist Carlo Valdinoci blowshimself up when his bomb explodesprematurely at the Washington DC home ofU.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer.

1917- A New York City night watchman killedby a Galleanist bomb placed at ajudge‘shouse.

1921. Three anarchists shoot 3-time Spanishpremier Eduardo Dato Iradier dead in Madrid.

1920. Wall Street bombing kills 38 and wounds 143. Galleanist Mario Buda widely believedto be the perpetrator.

1923 - Francisco Ascaso, and BuenaventuraDurruti assassinate wealthy Cardinal JuanSoldevilla of Saragossa as a reprisal for thekilling of an anarcho-syndicalist unionist.

1924 - Ascaso and Durruti attempt toassassinate the arch-reactionary KingAlfonso XIII of Spain in Paris.

1924 - Ascaso and Durruti organizeunsuccessful attacks on military barracksin Barcelona. They flee to Latin Americacarrying out bank robberies in Chile andArgentina

1926-1928 - Several bombings in Argentinaorganized by Severino Di Giovanni,supporting Sacco and Vanzetti and againstfascist Italy's interests there.

1932—A dynamite-filled package bombleft by Galleanists destroys Judge WebsterThayer's home in Worcester, Massachusetts,injuring his wife and a housekeeper. Thayerpresided over the trials of Sacco andVanzetti.

1933 - Giuseppe Zangara shoots and killsChicago mayor, Anton Cermack, missing near-by President Roosevelt.

Note: There are questions regarding McKinley'sand Cermack‘s assassins as to whether theywere actually anarchists. Still, both shootingshad a profoundly negative impact on theanarchist movements of the times.

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FIFTH ESTATE

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A new world can't be builtin the streets. Makingresistance real meanscreating an alternatesocial structure.BY JEFF SI-IANTZ

he Occupy mobilizations of the lastyear have offered to many some hopefor a renewal ofpopular movementsand altematives to state capitalist

arrangements Yet, perhaps few recurring eventsshow the great disparity that exists betweenactivist subcultures and broader working classand poor communities in North Americathan the privileging of street protests anddemonstrations within activist practices.

There is a rote ritualism that gives streetdemos and public expressions of dissent priorityover other strategies and tactics. Yet massdemos that bring together atomized individualswithout a real base or infrastructures supportingthe mobilizations have minimal real impact.

We need to build lasting infrastructuresrather than being sitting ducks in the streets.

It seems highly likely, indeed almost certain,

that the spectacular waves of altemativeglobalization struggles from the summitprotests since Seattle in 1999 to the ongoingOccupy movements launched in 2011, will losemomentum and subside or drift into reformismin the absence ofbuilding real connectionsand moving toward struggles for control inworkplaces and neighborhoods.

The realms ofworkplaces, neighborhoods,and households have largely been ignored orabandoned as sites of transformative struggleby current activist movements. Workplacestruggles, where they exist at all, are dominatedby bureaucratic mainstream unions focused onbargaining compromises with employers.

Household organizing has been largelyoverlooked by radical activists—apart fromthose who retreat into their ovm (privatized anddetached) collective houses. Issues ofmentalhealth and wellbeing have been given too littleattention in movements focused on economicsand politics in a more traditional and limitedfashion.

BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURES OFRESISTANCE

Anarchists recognize (or should) thatstruggles for a better world beyond statecapitalism must occur on two simultaneouslevels. They must be capable of defeating states

and capital and must, at the same time, provideinfrastructures or foundations of the futuresociety in the present day. Indeed, this latterprocess will be a fundamental part of the workof defeating states and capital.

Through infrastructures of resistance,movements will build alternatives but, asimportantly, have capacities to defend thenew social formations. These infrastructures ofresistance will directly confront state capitalistpower. Thus, they will need to be defendedfrom often savage attack. The key impulse is toshift the terrain of anti-capitalist struggle froma defensive position—reacting to elite policiesand practices or merely offering dissent—to anoffensive one—contesting ruling structures andoffering workable altematives. Movements needto shift from a position ofresistance to one ofactive transformation.

This would serve to meet practical needs—ofshelter, education, health, and wellbeing—whilealso raising visions for broader alternativesand stoking the capacity to imagine or see newpossibilities.

Building infrastructures of resistance willdirectly affect movements in practical andvisionary ways. It will also challenge rulingelites by pushing them into reactive, rather thanpurely offensive, and confident, positions.

Such infrastructures of resistance would shift »

FIFTH ESTATE

D possibilities for strategizing and mobilization.They might render demonstrations unnecessaryby offering a base for refusing or counteringinstitutions and practices of states and capital.At the same time, more than simply opposingauthoritarian institutions we might develop ourovm means for living the lives we desire.

Transformation must focus on controllingmeans of reproduction as well as means ofproduction. Focus on worker control aloneleaves communities unable to allocate resourceseffectively and efficiently to meet broader needs(social or ecological).

At the same time, community control withoutcontrol ofmeans ofproduction would be futile,a fantasy.

A new social world cannot be built fromscratch. Nor does it need to be.

The mutual aid relationships and alreadyexisting associations that people have organizedaround work and personal interests (clubs,groups, informal workplace networks, evensubcultures) can provide possible resources.

At the same time, many infrastructuresare needed. Even today, in working class andpoor neighborhoods and households, manyworkers have only loose informal connectionsin their workplaces. In apartment complexes,households can link up in direct assemblies toorganize shared resources. Some might includecooking, maintenance, laundry, health care,education, birthing rooms, and recreationalfacilities.

Building infrastructures of resistanceencourages novel ways of thinking aboutrevolutionary transformation. Rather thanthe familiar form of street organizationor protest action, within constructiveanarchist approaches, the action is in theorganizing. There needs to be already existinginfrastructures or else a radical or revolutionarytransformation will be impossible (ordisastrous).

On the need for pre-existing revolutionaryinfrastructures, larger mobilizations suchas general strikes cannot have a meaningfulimpact in the absence of infrastructures ofresistance. Under general strike conditionsessential goods and services would be absent.Water, energy, food, and medical serviceswould not be available without altemativeassociations or capacities to occupy and runworkplaces to meet human social needs. Thesesorts of takeover themselves require pre-existinginfrastructures.

UNIONSOne of the infrastructures that requires a

real altemative are labor unions, institutionsthat have been at the heart ofworking class(workplace and community) struggles butwhich have long been conservatizing forces.For most anarchists, unions have lost anyemancipatory capacities they might have onceheld. Indeed, for many anarchists, unionswere never geared toward emancipation fromcapitalism, apart from the examples posed bya few syndicalist unions such as the IndustrialWorkers of the World in North America or theConféderation National de Trabajo (CNT).

Unions manage the labor and wagerelationship. They do not oppose it. Theyrepresent a bureaucratic structure outsideof the workplace rather than a democraticfree association ofworkers within it. In fact,mainstream unions often work to stamp outor disband such associations where theydo emerge in workplaces and challengemanagement and ownership

In some ways the role of radical capacityofunions is a moot point since unionizationrates have declined to miniscule proportionsin industries in the United States and Canada.There is presently an eight percent unionizationrate in non-govermnental workplaces inthe United States. It is likely that the tmionmovement will not recover, at least in itspreviously understood and recognized forms. Ofcourse, the point is in no way to rebuild tmions,since why would we expect them to performdifferently than they have under previousconditions. The point is to build the strength ofrarrk-and-file working class movements withinbroad struggles.

So, the door is wide open, the floor clearedfor new forms ofworking class workplaceassociation or organization. Yet, there havebeen only halting, experimental attempts tofill the void. Some have been false starts whileothers hold some‘ promise. Those that are mostpromising suggest a coming together of rankand file activists and militants.

There can be no meaningful workplace strikewithout some workplace organizing. Militantorganizing in the workplace requires rank andfile altematives, such as flying squads, workinggroups, and direct action groups. Some ofthese altematives have developed with varyingdegrees of success.

CONCLUSIONAnarchist organizers should radically shift

the terrain of anti-capitalist struggles, movingto new battlegrounds rather than staying inthe streets ofprotest and the town squares ofOccupy movements.

For constructive anarchists there are threeprimary sites of struggle with which anarchistsmust be engaged. These are the neighborhoods,workplaces, and households. Successfulorganizing in these areas should provide meansto defeat states and capital, while also makingthe new world in the present—rather thanwaiting for a post-capitalist future. This shiftmust involve offensive as well as defensivestrategies.

Movements have too often, for too long,been caught up in defensive or reactivestruggles—responding to pieces ofharmfullegislation or damaging public policy, oropposing specific corporate or governmentpractices. Such pursuits have dominated thevision of movements and activists in the globalNorth. It has led to a staleness of approachthat fails to inspire people while leadinginstead to frustration and demoralization asrote repetitions of rituals are played out inresponse to extemal decisions by others ratherthan asserting intemal or organic needs anddesires of the people directly involved. Instead,movements need to affirm their own wishes andvisions of a better world.

Even more, the rituals of street protest,disconnected from a prior organizedcormnunity base, do little to actually challengepower or structure of inequality. Typically,they simply serve to reinforce the notion thatliberal democracies allow spaces for dissentand divergent views. One might question theamount of energy, resources, and time put intosingle issue campaigns, street demonstrations,and camps on public lands.

Spectacular ritual events like demonstrations,protests, and public occupations dominateactivist imaginations and organizational visions.This demonstration fixation has hinderedsocial movements in liberal democracies forgenerations.

The present period offers some newand encouraging openings—windows ofopportunity for radical perspectives andmovements against and beyond states andcapital. To take advantage of this moment it isnecessary to take a hard look at the ingrainedrituals that have come to dominate movements,particularly those holdovers from periods oflesser mobilization.

Jeff Shantz is an anarchist communityorganizer in Surrey, British Columbia andauthor of Active Anarchy editor of Protestand Punishment. He is active with the CriticalCriminology Working Group. His web addressis jeffshantz.ca.

FIFTH ESTATE

LondonCallingJohn Zerzan inLondon, but notfor the OlympicsBY JOHN ZERZAN

The first half of August 2012 found my wifeAlice and I in London, but not for the OlympicGames. The nonprofit contemporary artgallery Raven Row invited me to participate ina series of talks and displays titled “The RealTruth: A World's Fair."

The talks took place on successiveweekends at the gallery on Artillery Lane inthe East End just north of Whitechapel. Wearrived too late to take in the first one on thehistory of world fairs, and were back in theStates by the time of the fourth presentation,by an ex-CIA operative.

The third speaker, Jim Channon, of MenWho Stare at Goats fame, held forth onAugust 11 and proved to be a rather classicNew Age airhead. All is going well, createyour own reality, e.g., even the military canbe the biggest possible force for good(!).Some of us blasted him in no uncertain termsand people in the audience weren't buyingwhat he was selling.

My turn was second in the series on August4. The Raven Row auditorium (about 150capacity) filled up and some people wereturned away at the door. More importantwas the very high level of discussion after Ispoke and the conversations that continuedat length.

The title of my talk was “The MurderousIdolatry of the Future: Anarcho-Primitivismand the End of Technology." In it, Idiscussed the pathologies created by thedisappearance of community and its rootswith its culmination of mass society in the

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techno-sphere and the results such as therising wave of mass shootings and drugepidemics.

Also, a room was given over to issues ofthe Fifth Estate from each of the years ithas published since the 1960s; forty-sevenissues in total. Raven Row requested thesefrom the Detroit archive and following theirdisplay are now stored at MayDay Roomsalso in London.

MayDay Rooms describes itself as “a safehouse for vulnerable archives and historicalmaterial linked to social movements,experimental culture, and marginalizedfigures and groups. A site for gathering,holding, and animating documents andidioms of dissent which continue to offera critically productive and emancipatoryrelation to the turbulent present."maydayrooms.org

Several videos were screened, includingthe excellent 2003 high tech survey DasNetz: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet.We brought books, posters, and t-shirts thatwere prominently displayed.

The whole encounter was a marvelousglimpse into the possibilities and range ofvisions in the arena of art today. “The RealTruth," curated by the very talented SuzanneTreister, was one such example, and RavenRow overall has been a stand-out venuefor contemporary explorations. Its director,Alex Sainsbury, is dedicated to providing animportant center for pushing limits in general.

We made day trips to the Birmingham areaand to Oxford, but spent most of our timewalking all over London from our East End

Photo by Eva Herzog

(Spitalfields) base, a lovely flat above RavenRow's gallery spaces.

Several anarchists I'm touch withshowed up including Keith from TransitionsChichester who'd biked 70 miles from Sussexthe morning of my talk, Ed from Wales, Stevefrom Cumbria's Dark Mountain Project innorthwest England, former Green Anarchisteditor John Connor from Oxford, andHarsheek, a young Londoner.

There are various anarchist projects afoot,but my impression was that communicationamong them was fairly minimal. However,given a high level of antipathy toward thedominant order that I was hearing, thereare definitely radical possibilities. Anarcho-primitivism is something of a presence andI was gratified to learn there were Englishlisteners to my Anarchy Radio programbroadcast from Eugene.

All in all, a wonderful 2-3 weeks madepossible by our Raven Row friends.

The gallery web site is ravenrow.org; the FifthEstates are archived at maydayrooms.org.

John Zerzan is an American anarchist andprimitivist philosopher and author ofseveralbooks on the subject. His articles which beganthe introduction ofprimitivist and anti-civilization ideas to the anarchist milieufirstappeared in the Fifth Estate in the late 1970s.His web site isjohnzerzan.netZerzan‘s one hour live radio show,“AnarchyRadio” airs Tuesday, 7:00pm, PST,and is available by audio streaming at KWVA88.1 FM.

FIFTH ESTATE

A CHANGING VIETNAMAfter decades of war and revolution, a communist country looksincreasingly like the capitalist countries it fought against.BY JONNY BALL

Having lived and worked in Vietnam for a year now, I have only aslightly better understanding of the country than when I first arrived. Thisis a country of extremely complex paradoxes and antagonisms. I remaindumbfounded by the disparities, hypocrisies and corruption that areendemic at every level of every institution.

One could argue this is a common feature of all nation-states andmarket-oriented societies, and this may be true. But for one styling itselfas socialist, run by a communist party with a firm monopoly ofpoliticalpower, these features seem even more maniacal.

Not long after my arrival in Hanoi, I began thinking that a mood ofentropy emanates from the entire city—it is a totally schizophrenicmetropolis.

modemizaiion, and globalization. Far from being nominal or abstract, thereforms manifest themselves in very visible ways.

The highway between Hanoi's airport and the city centre is edged withgigantic billboards looming over rice paddies, advertising banks, cars, andmobile phones. The country's northem capital has long been at the mercyof its traffic, but its clogged arteries are increasingly filled with importedBentleys, Porsches, and 4x4s, the vehicles of choice for the nouveau richedespite a tariff of 80 percent on automobiles.

Giant billboards that cover French colonial buildings in the old quarterare adomed with a Big Brother-esque portrait of Steve Iobs with the tag-line, “Think Different." Presumably, the country's rulers hope the sloganisn't taken too literally.

In the richer districts, gaudy communist propaganda sits uncomfortablybeside Gucci posters and designer

We are told it is the dawning 1of the Asian Century. The globalbalance ofpower is shifting againtowards the East. The economicpowerhouses of China, India,South Korea, and Taiwan, putrecession-hit European andAmerican markets to shame, withGDP growth rates consistently ‘pushing towards double figures for 'the last decade,

China has capitalized fully Ion its vast army of cheap labor 'and the intemal migration from

fashion outlets. While the majorityl pay for public education and

healthcare, the propertied classesI send their children to private' English language schools to ensure

their class position and relativewealth is protected for theirprogeny.

Conspicuous consumptionis the order of the day, with anew generation keen to flaunt

1 money and consumer goods ofI which their grandparents could

only dream. All the paradoxes ofthe cotmtryside to burgeoning Photos by Alison Trew 'modem capitalism, the inequities,megacities. An authoritarian, one- Gucci meets Communism, Inc. in Hanoi discords and antagonisms produceparty state keeps a tight lid on itspower, paying lip-service to Marx, Mao and Lenin while simultaneouslywelcoming economic liberalization, foreign direct investment, and theheady world ofglobalization. As the developed economies in the Weststruggle to pay off their intemational creditors and manage their structuraldeficits, the Asian Tigers enjoy a boom.

Vietnam's leaders, predictably, also want a piece of the pie.Almost forty years after the withdrawal ofUS troops from Saigon, the

Communist Party-Viemam (CPV) continues along the same path it haspursued since the doi moi reforms announced in 1986. Comparable in sumand substance to China's Deng Xioping's restructuring towards a “socialist-orientated market economy," Vietnam's doi moi policies amount to anabandomnent (or, as the govemment says, a temporary hiatus) of some ofMarxism's core tenets.

These include a discarding of the previously unassailable principleofcentral planning and collectivization in industry and agriculture, andinstead embracing what was once anathema—economic liberalization,

a dissonance as unmistakable in thisostensibly socialist republic as in any capitalist mecca.

The brazen contradiction between official Party doctrine and its actualpractice is perhaps best encapsulated in the name ofVietnam's “Ho ChiMinh Stock Exchange.’’ Now, the great leader's near-ubiquitous imagehas to compete for space with the Apple logo and the Los Angeles Lakers'emblem. And, as Uncle Ho lies in his air-tight glass coffin, with lines ofbackpackers, tourists, and Vietnamese faithful filing past in neat, reverentsuccession, how would he interpret the state ofhis country today?

One suspects he'd be fuming in his transparent grave like a rotisseriechicken. The posters announcing the annual Labor Day celebrations comecomplete with a sponsor—Vietcom Bank. lust outside the city, a privategated community (named Ciputra, after its Indonesian property-mogulowner) complete with luxury apartments and fast-food outlets is populatedby expats, businessmen, and high-ranking govemment officials. Outside

See VIETNAM, page 12

FIFTH ESTATE

VitFrom page 11

a KFC in the city centre, rubbish collectors andfruit sellers struggle to make a living in a countrywith an equality ranking lower than Niger andTanzania's.

Flashback to 1976, a year after the withdrawalofUS troops from Saigon, and the newly-unifiedcountry is embarking upon a process of forcedcollectivization, nationalization, and “re-education-through-labor" for those Vietnamesewho fought for the Southem army and theirAmerican counterparts.

An exact figure of 58,220 Americans deaths;around 1,000,000-3,000,000 Vietnamese deaths(but those are rarely tabulated). Approximatelyhalf a million Cambodian and Laotian deaths,but again, who's counting?. Millions dead byany measure, in a proxywar between competingsuperpowers. Victims of the great geopoliticalgame that was the Cold War.

the pursuit and perpetuation of their own power.Between the American anny with their Thai,

Australian, and South Viemamese allies, and theNorth Vietnamese anny, with their Russian andChinese allies, there is no side to be taken. Whenfaced with two options, always choose the third.A plague on both their houses.

The Vietnam conflict was a protracted civilwar exacerbated by foreign military intervention.No doubt without the presence ofUS troops,Saigon would have quickly been captured by thecommunists.

Similarly, without the backing of China andthe Soviet Union, the communists would havefound it difficult to withstand the onslaughtofAmerican firepower. It was in this sense asurrogate war, a chess board for nuclear-armed

national pride and America's intemationalembarrassment.

One bloc trying to prevent the feared, "domino In today's Vietnam, where three-quarters ofeffect," the other trying to provoke the dominos'fall. In their rhetoric, each had a seeminglyunique orthodox creed, but one that concealedthe real principle both blocs held in common-

the population were bom after 1975, history ismanipulated and used as a tool, a justification forthe continued rule of a dictatorial elite, parasiteson a memory embedded into the national

consciousness, a memory altered and frameda posteriori, and then proliferated by a rulingclass keen on continuing their dominance intoposterity. The memory ofwar legitimizes themand consolidates their power.

Incontestable deference and acclaim for thosewho fought off imperialist invaders—The Partywhich fought off French, Japanese, and Americanoccupiers, and who first established Vietnamas an independent nation, must certainly knowwhat's best. But their time will come. An AsianSpring is near.

The Party's grip on power depends ontheir ability to sustain high growth rates andemployment. But as demand for exports dries up,there are signs of stress in an economy nearingthe end of a credit and property binge. Once this

states, for whom a direct conflict meant mutually warped social contract is broken, who knowsassured destruction. Vietnam was their go-between.

And, to the victors belong the spoils. TheUS military suffered humiliating defeat for thefirst time and at the hands of a peasant army.A superpower ousted by a national liberationmovement in full view of the press corps.

Or, so the official narrative goes. Vietnam's

what form a post-CPVVietnam will take.With hindsight, (and forgive the historical

revisionism, it is without an ounce ofglee ortriumphalism) if anyone actually “won," it wasthe American invaders. The US wanted Vietnam,or at least the South, to remain a capitalistpuppet state as a bastion against communismin the region. Today, Vietnam is a capitalist

state in a region ofcapitalist states. The socialistexperiment failed and now theyre open forbusiness.

When it comes to Vietnam's tenitorial disputeswith China (namely over the Spratly islands),America increasingly supports its old enemy asa buttress against Beijing, its main economiccompetitor.

The liberal journalist, Wrll Hutton, editor ofThe Observer, comments that, “Although it did notseem so at the time, and is not understood eventoday in these terms. . . By delaying a comrntmistgovemment in Vietnam, with its Chinesebacking, until 1975, the United States hadbought a crucial decade for the Asian economyto begin its growth, led by exports, and to show,indisputably, that capitalist development wasmore successful than communist."

But in wars between political states, thenumber of losers far outweigh the number ofwinners. It is the poor who fight the wars of therich, and it is obscene to try and identifywinnersor losers in a conflict that left as many as fivemillion dead. Perhaps the most accurate analysiswould be that Vietnam saw decades of conflict inwhich nobody really won.

The victory ofthe Stalinist CPV didn't equalemancipation for the Vretnarnese. Nor wouldan American victory have been much different.

violently resisted by the local population as thegovemment tries to auction off sites for newdevelopments, resorts and gated-communities.None of this is reported in the state-controlledmedia.

Vietnam is a cotmtry of such glaring andunsustainable intemal contradictions that itcannot remain in stasis. The corruption of itsleaders does not go unnoticed by tech-savvyyouths who bypass the block on social networks,nor by rural farmers (compromising a majorityof the population) who can see first hand thatthe Party line doesn't hold water. The nonsenseofquasi-Marxist spin is laid bare when you'reforcibly removed from your home to make wayfor a golf course.

It shouldn't be long before localized resistancedevelops into general insurrection.

Jonny Ball is an English teacher in Hanoi. Heis originally from Liverpool, England.

Political opposition is routinely suppressed,human rights campaigners and bloggersjailed, and reformist organizations such as VietTan labeled as “terrorists.” Land evictions are

FIFTH ESTATE

Art in SupportofPoliticalPrisonersMarie Mason and Kelly Poe Exhibit:“What keeps you sane?"

Whenyou receive a phone call or a letter fromMarie Mason, the Green Scare prisoner servingthe longest sentence for eco-sabotage, one isalmost startled at howbuoyant she is, filled withquestions aboutwhatyou're doing and wantingto give her opinion on what is happening in theworld.

It's hard to imagine her strength and resolvegiven her daily circumstances and the future thestate intends for her.

Marie is in her third year ofa 22-year sentencefollowing her guilty plea to two acts ofpropertydamage in which no one was hurt. For this, she is

Kelly Poe's photo of Marie Mason's image of sanity and chair. table, and book.

neither ofthese issues but is kept there for prmitiveand surveillance reasons.

In spite ofall ofthis, her visitor reports, “She isvery strong and very committed."

A major reason Marie remains resoluteand doesn't fall into the despair as do so manyother Carswell's inmates which are acted outin depression and sometimes violence, is thearnotmt ofsupport she receives from friends,family, comrades, and supporters.

This is manifested by large support actions suchas the now annual lune 11th Day ofSolidaritywith Marie and another long-term Green Scare

being held in a high security federal facility in Fort prisoner, Eric McDavid. Actions across the worldWorth, Texas under harsh conditions. ranged from small letter writing parties to banner

A recent visitor to her at Federal Medical Center drops, a punk rock karaoke event in NewYork City,Carswell reported, “I just can't fathom what lifeis like everyday in that facility.’' Marie's unit is the

to more militant actions, all expressing support forEric and Marie and other Green Scare prisoners.

size of a gymnasium, which initially had individual Opposition to the repression and demonizingcells along the walls. However, after a period ofconstruction, the cells have been made into two-person tmits, squeezing the inmates even more.

ofMarie and other Green Scare govemmenttargets has gained support in a multitude ofways.

A recent one was an installation organizedThere is a small outdoor exercise cage, but even by photographer Kelly Poe at Chicago's The

that has a concrete floor and wire on the top, sothe prisoners never have an unobstructed view ofthe sky.

Since being pulled out of a large generalpopulation prison in Minnesota in 2010 andtransferred to Carswell, she has been outsideher building only once when she went for an eyeexam. Other than that, she has been in that samebuilding since arrived.

Marie's deep love of the natural world is whatimpelled her actions both inside and outside the

Suburban gallery ofher work and Marie'sjailhouse paintings which ran from September23-October 28.

In 2006, Poe began corresponding with severalincarcerated enviromnental activists imprisonedas a result ofOperation Backfire, the federalgovernment's program targeting animal andenvironmental liberation groups, and later, Marie.

She asked each the question: “What are theplaces that you retum to inside your mind's eye;the sacred places that you visualize to help keep

law, and now she hasn't set foot on even a patch of you sane? I'll go there and make a picture for you."earth in two years.

Carswell describes itself as “a federal prison forfemale inmates ofall security levels with specialmedical and mental health needs." Marie has

Poe traveled across the country to the areascited by those in prison as far apart as the Oregoncoast, South Dakota Badlands, the Arizonadesert, and the shore ofLake Michigan to find

and photograph the wild landscapes mentionedby prisoners Rod Coronado, lake Conroy, JeffreyLuers, Marie Mason, Daniel McGowan, IonathanPaul, and Peter Young.

Seven photographs captured by Poe were firstshown at Los Angeles’ LA><ART gallery in March2012 to great acclaim.

She also created an accompanying handmade,oversized book, For the Wild, printed on ragpaper, weighing 30 pounds, containing her yearsofcorrespondence, photographs, drawings andletters between the artist and activists. Poe alsoprinted 120 ofa smaller version of the book for theLos Angeles and recent exhibits.

For The Suburban show, Poe assembled 30original artworks by Marie mailed from prison tofriends, family, and outside supporters paintedon the back of letters. Poe had Marie's image, .a magnificent sunset with a green flash overLake Michigan seen from Empire, Michigan,enlarged to wall size in front ofthe original Forthe Wrld bookwith a table and chair designed byPoe. Marie's paintings were displayed on a rackspecially constructed for the exhibit.

The opening reception was well attended andquite lively. It was exactlywhat Marie would havewanted [tmdoubtedly, though, not focused onher]; people brought together in solidarity andcommitted to protecting the earth.

Marie appreciates letters, although she can onlywrite back to a restricted number ofpeople. Writeher at: Marie Mason #04672-061, FMC Carswell,P.O. Box 27137, FortWorth TX 76127.

Info at supportrnariemason.com. Funds forher support and legal matters are always needed.

FIFTH ESTATE

INQUISITION 2012

Northwest federal grandjury targets anarchistsActivists jailed for their resistance to the attempt to criminalize a philosophyBY GOLDIE SILENCE

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s of early November, three people

Detention Facility near Seattlebecause of their refusal to provide

a federal grand jury with information aboutanarchist beliefs and associations.

Federal government prosecutors claimthey are investigating violent actions atdemonstrations, but the Portland-basedCommittee Against Political Repressionsays the extensive surveillance, SWAT raids,and grand jury subpoenas are not simply aresponse to a few broken windows, but aneffort to criminalize the political philosophyof anarchism.

Local activists Matt Duran and Katherine“KteeO" Olejnik are charged with civilcontempt for refusing to testify. They, andanyone else subpoenaed by the panelduring its term, can be incarcerated until it isdissolved in March 2014, or longer if its termis extended.

This political inquisition went public inJuly 2012, when several homes in the PacificNorthwest were raided by heavily armedlocal police SWAT teams, and FBI and JointTerrorism Task Force agents, using batteringrams, flash grenades, and assault rifles. Theyalso exercised search warrants for literatureand other items related to anarchistactivities, and what government agenciesvaguely identify as an “ongoing violent crimeinvestigation."

At the same time, subpoenas were issuedfor people to testify before a Seattle-basedfederal grand jury. In September, the jailingof anarchists who refused to cooperate withthe nightmarish proceedings began.

All of those subpoenaed so far havebravely declared their resolve to resist thegrand jury demands despite the hardshipsthis creates for them, their families,and friends. Leah-Lynn Plante, the thirdperson to resist the grand jury, has vividlydiscussed the fear and emotional turmoilshe experienced from the military-style raidon her home, the exacerbation of previousemotional problems it has caused, and not

were detained in the SeaTac Federal

being able to sleep properly ever since.Sadly, what the government has been

doing in the Northwest is far from anaberration, but an integral part of the normalongoing state repression of dissenters. Sinceanarchist activities and ideas are currentlyreceiving so much public attention, andeven respect, it is no surprise they are beingtargeted. '

In March 2012, the federal governmentformed a grand jury in Seattle to investigatepolitical activities. But this only came topublic notice in July when homes wereinvaded. These heavy-handed governmentmoves can be best understood in thecontext of the past two years of militantprotest activities throughout the U.S. Inthe Pacific Northwest, there have beenincreasing numbers and intensity of actionsin opposition to widespread police brutalityand murders, the vicious and degrading

Tides of Flame/tidesofflame.wordpress.comOn the streets at the Oakland General Strike, Nov. 2, 2011. One of the actions the Northwest grandjury is investigating. A general strike is a weapon greatly feared by the ruling class.

prison system, austerity measures, anddecreases in public transit service withfare increases, deteriorating educationalopportunities, loss of jobs and affordablehousing, gentrification, racist and anti-immigrant policies, the crackdown againstthe #Occupy movement, and the generalhumiliations of everyday life.

Police attacks with so-called non-lethalweapons, arrests, prolonged court cases,and imprisonment, along with increasinglydraconian laws, have not significantlyquelled these diverse ongoing protestactions. This is of great concern to those inpower, particularly as people focusing ondifferent social issues and approaches havejoined together, albeit tentatively and withongoing debates and disagreements overmethods and goals.

The majority of those subpoenaed totestify have so far been anarchists, but

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P the sweep of this attempt at intimidationalso includes those who do not considerthemselves anarchists or anti-authoritarians.

Federal grand juries have long been usedin the U.S. to collect information aboutindividuals and groups involved in socialmovements and to intimidate people aspart of the government's long history ofrepressing dissent. These bodies consist of16 to 23 jurors chosen solely by governmentprosecutors with no procedure for thosecalled to testify or their attorneys to protestthe empanelment of any juror based on thatperson's bias or any other grounds.

The very existence of such panels andwhat is being investigated are considered tobe secret, and those subpoenaed may noteven be told the purpose of the hearings.Moreover, there is no limit on the kinds of

Moreover, sympathy for, if not activeinvolvement in, targeted vandalism has beenon the rise. All of this has led to increasinglymilitant public demonstrations, including the2012 May Day demonstrations.

Well before May 1, the internationalworking peoples’ day, mayors and policechiefs throughout the country werepreparing the public to accept justificationfor government crackdowns by announcingthat they were expecting “anarchistviolence" and intending to meet it with strictcontrol measures. The federal grand juryformed last March in Seattle is clearly part ofthe crackdown.

While it is wrong to conclude thatgrowing militancy is the direct cause ofthe intensifying government repression,it certainly has been used as justification.

“Federal grand juries have long been usedin the U.S. to collect information aboutindividuals and groups involved in socialmovements and to intimidate people..."questions people can be asked includingvery personal matters, information aboutfriends and acquaintances, as well as politicalactivities.

The context is especially intimidatingbecause the proceedings are held behindclosed doors, and neither attorneys ofthose summoned nor the general publicare permitted to attend. No one knows inadvance whether or not a grand jury willcharge any of those subpoenaed or theirassociates with crimes.

Over the years, many people subpoenaedbefore grand juries have refused to testify,risking jail for civil contempt, whether ornot the grand jury has eventually decidedto charge them with a specific crime. Thosewho refuse to testify can be held as longas 18 months, and extensions of periods ofimprisonment are not unheard of.

In 2010 and 2011 there were militantdemonstrations against police brutalityand for students’ rights in the Northwest.Following these, #Occupy and the WestCoast port shutdowns involved many peoplein actions related to social issues for thefirst time. And, as the various protests havecontinued, people have been supportingeach other in their increasing militancy.

Seattle's liberal/progressive Mayor MikeMcGinn strongly reiterated this messageimmediately before the scheduled Mayday demonstrations, on April 30. On May1, McGinn went so far as to declare anemergency situation, claiming anarchistsconstituted a threat to public safety. As itturned out, what occurred was vandalismagainst corporate and government property.

Then in July came the raids on homesin Seattle and Olympia, Washington, andPortland, Oregon, along with subpoenasrequiring people to testify before the grandjury-

On August 2, only Leah-Lynn Planteappeared at the Federal Courthouse inSeattle. After formally telling the grand jurythat she refused to answer their questions,she was temporarily allowed to return home.But, Plante and two others were subpoenaedto appear again in September.

On September 13, the grand jury metagain, and this time Plante and Matt Duranappeared, but both refused to testify. Duranwas stripped of his right to remain silentby being given immunity from prosecutionbased on what he might tell the grand jury.He still refused to testify and was chargedwith civil contempt and held in solitary

confinement for almost a month before beingmoved into the general prison population.

On September 27 another subpoenaedperson, Katherine “KteeO" Olejnik appearedand refused to testify. Since, liI<e Duran, shewas stripped of her legal rights by beinggiven immunity, she was also charged withcivil contempt and incarcerated.

Plante refused to testify fora third timeon October 10, and became the third personto be imprisoned for refusing to cooperate.However, on October 17 she appeared beforethe grand jury and was quietly released. Theconditions of her release have not yet beenmade public.

On October 25, another person, Matthew"Maddy" Pfeiffer was served with a subpoenato appear before the grand jury on November7. After receiving the subpoena, Maddyjoined the others in declaring the intensionto not cooperate.

It is clear that the Seattle grand jury'sintent is to gather information on anarchistsand others for the purpose of furthersurveillance and repression, as well as tomake cooperation between dissentersdifficult by creating fear and distrust amongthose who have participated in protestactivities. The grand jury resisters clearlyarticulate their intention to resist this.

As Olejnik says, “For me choosing toresist a grand jury is about humanity—Icannot and will not say something that couldgreatly harm a person's life and providinginformation that could lead to long termincarceration would be doing that."

Labeling those being targeted as“anarchists," even those with long historiesof identifying themselves as other thananarchist, does not simply stem from policeand FBI ignorance of differences betweenvarious political and social perspectives.It enables the government to send themessage that cooperating with anarchists,or even possessing and/or reading anarchistliterature, is dangerous.

Nevertheless, the raids and grand juryproceedings have had the opposite effect,resulting in over 400 organizations andthousands of individuals expressing theirsupport for and solidarity with thoseaffected, and many actions in solidarityacross the U.S. and the world.

For more information: CommitteeAgainst Political Repression atnopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com

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l!.'§E..'.'l. .lll.!§...B.l.l!?.l..E’.lll.lE’t 47, Edith Marie Price shows morethan a few signs ofwear. While hermarmerisms generally convey abouyant and carefree geniality,

her face's gauntness betrays the ravages ofdecades of intravenous drug use, poverty, andthe inevitable progression of HIV. Even whenshe laughs, her dark eyes seem to sparkle withthe disarming intensity of all that they haveseen.

For Edith, or Edie, as she is known to mostof the other residents of the maximum securitycell block she currently calls home, 2012 is avery special year. It marks the 30th anniversary

of her ride in the revolvingdoors of Canada's prisonsystem.

Since her first conflictwith the law at age 17,Edie has been arrested

, over 100 times andconvicted of 52 offences,all of them drug-related.A long-term opiate user,Edie once worked in the

sex trade to support her addiction. “I quitworking the streets because I'm gay" sheexplains. “That, and I realized I could selldrugs instead."

“It's not like I'm out to hurt people," shesays of her line of work. “A lot of people cometo me. If they're hungry, I feed them; if they'resick, I take care of them."

Police target drug dealers who they see asbeing responsible for the unsightly presenceof addiction on the streets, and for the thefts,

BY KELLYPFLUG-BACK

robberies, and break-ins which people commitbecause they lack other means to pay fordrugs.

Although the activities of drug dealerscreate major problems in poor communities,they are not the root cause of crime andaddiction, according to Edie. In fact, shesays, cracking down on trafficking generallyescalates levels of street crime as dealersbecome more aggressive and reckless in orderto make the risks worth it for themselvesfinancially, often engaging in violent turf

wars and cutting their product with toxicsubstances to increase weight, resulting inepidemic deaths within the user population.

Drug abuse, Edie says, usually stems fromthe emotional and psychological pain oftrauma, one of the few commodities whichthe poor and disenfranchised are allowed topossess in sheer surplus. Like a grotesquelyhigh proportion ofwomen who end up on thestreets and in conflict with the law, Edie’s lifehas been shaped by abuse and neglect. Fromthe age of six, Edie was sexually preyed uponby her step-father. The abuse was an opensecret in their home, known to all but neveracknowledged until Edie became pregnantat 16 and her mother demanded she get anabortion.

While the high percentage of abusesurvivors in the female prison population isclear, the institution which houses Edie anda few hundred other women does nothingto address this in the allegedly rehabilitativestructure of its policies and regimen. “Theguards here," Edie tells me, “have no trainingfor dealing with mental health issues. And,having been raped is a mental health issue.But how do you go up to a guard and say‘Look, I was abused, Iwas raped'?"

It was abuse which pushed Edie to dropout of school in the eighth grade, confusedand alienated by the grim reality of her homelife. Unable to bear her father's violence andher mother's denial any longer, she ran awayat 17 to live on the streets of Toronto. Herolder brother, already a heroin user, was theonly person she knew from whom to seekcompanionship. “My brother was the first oneto put a needle in my arm," she tells me, hereyes welling with tears. “And every time I tellhim that, he cries."

While Edie’s drug use itself has notsignificantly interfered with her ability towork and lead a relatively stable life, thecriminalization of her addiction has. Whenshe moved to Edmonton after earning a forkliftoperator's license a few years ago, it was notlong before local authorities learned ofherextensive drug history and began routinely

searching her whenever she was spotteddowntown.

These searches were often coupled withviolence as a deep scar running down her leftshin attests, and it was not uncommon formale officers to illegally strip-search her. Nowback in Ontario, the searches of Edie’s homeand person are no less routine and systematic.A raid at the St. Catherine's house where shelives with her wife of 15 years, resulted in thediscovery of two prescription opiate pills, andis the reason for her current incarceration.

If drug use were not treated as a criminaloffense, Edie feels that she could have had avery different lot in life. With access to safeinjection sites and a greater availability ofharm reduction services, she would not haveresorted to using the contaminated needlethat infected her with HIV. Without thedisruption of frequent periods of incarcerationshe could have pursued her career interestsrather than working the sex trade against herwishes.

Like many people who grapple withaddiction in a socciety which regards drugdependance as a crime and a moral defectrather than a complex and layered socialissue, Edie’s life has been characterized bybitter ,"If Only;"—if only she hadn't developedan addiction, she would not have spent the30 years in and out of jail. If only she'd hadlove and stability in her childhood insteadofviolence and isolation she would not havespent her life carrying the pain which pushedher down the road of drug abuse to begin with.

“When you really get down to the bottom ofit," Edie explains, “it's because I was raped thatI am in this position today. It is because I wasraped that the system fucks with me."

It is here that the majority ofpublic criticismrelating to the carceral system shows itslimitations as gender-biased analysis. Prisonsin general may be a way ofwarehousing thesurplus populations whose presence on thestreets challenges the fundamental myths ofcapitalism, but the institutions which imprisonwomen in particular are in many ways adifferent entity. »

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I Within a patriarchal society, imprisoningimpoverished and marginalized womenfunctions as a sort of return policy, throughwhich broken or defective objects maydiscretely be disposed of once they have beenused to the point where they can no longerserve their alloted purpose. Sex trade workerswho rob pimps or attack abusive clients, rapesurvivors who turn to drugs to escape thepain of post traumatic stress, and underpaidworkers who skim off of lecherous bosses mayeasily be discarded.

The inequalities inherent in patriarchalsociety will continue to produce a seeminglyendless selection of newer, more vulnerable,more easily dominated models for the benefitof the consumer class. And ,when they toobecome drab, worn out, or scarred to the pointof complete disfigurement from over-use,they can join their predecessors in one ofthe prison system's numerous dumpsites fordamaged and rejected goods.

While Edie’s body remains physicallyconfined, she has in many ways attaineda level of freedom which many survivors,incarcerated or otherwise, go their entire liveswithout realizing.

“I didn't go through this for nothing."She says, her face hardening with a stonyconviction. “Do you know how many peopleI advise in here? I know this system. I know itlike the back of my hand."

Edie is a woman who has stared back intothe faceless gaze of the overseer, studiedthe drives and motives of the state's judicialapparatus in painstaking detail. She hascome to understand and accept that her life'scircumstances are the product of complexsystems of power and oppression, ratherthan the simple outcome of her actions as anindividual.

It is this understanding which has allowedher to free herself from the intemalizedshame and self-hate which torment so manysurvivors of abuse, both structural and direct,and that is a freedom which no one can takeaway from her.

Kelly Pflug-Back, a Fifth Estate editor, isimprisoned in the same facility as Edie.

John McMahon, Torontosentencing judge: Pflug-Backshowed “zero remorse." >

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Kelly Pflug-Back sentenced to 15 months for attacks in TorontoFIFTH ESTATE

Fifth Estate writer and editor, Kelly RosePflug-Back, was sentenced by a Canadiancourt July 19 to 15 months in prison formilitant actions carried out by a Black Bloccontingent during protests at the 2010Toronto G20 meeting.

Kelly accepted a non-cooperation pleaagreement, pleading guilty to six counts ofmischief and one of wearing a disguise withcriminal intent. Her sentence was reduced byfour months to a total of 11 months in prisonbecause of time served which includedhouse arrest. Following her prison term shewill be on probation for three years.

Kelly is a long time community organizer,activist, published writer, poet, artist andmusician. A collection of Kelly's poetry,These Burning Streets, published by StrangersIn A Tangled Wilderness to support her isavailable from tangledwilderness.org.

Kelly is a long time activist with groupssuch as Food Not Bombs, Camas Booksin Victoria, B.C., harm reduction work inToronto, and indigenous solidarity work, as

well as hosting workshops and outreach forqueer youth.

At the time of her sentencing Kelly was afull time student working towards a degree.She maintains a vegan diet which is verydifficult to do in Canadian prisons.

Most mainstream media depicts Kellyas a violent vandal [see article below] whohas no remorse for terrorizing “innocentshoppers," as well as calling her cowardlyfor wearing a mask while taking on heavilyarmed and armored riot police in the midstof one of the largest surveillance cultures inthe world. [See Kelly's article, “G20 GenderViolence: Toronto Targeted Women," inSummer 2012 FE.]

The media has routinely refers tobreaking windows by Black Blocs as violent,occasionally declaring it as terrorism.Meanwhile, predictably downplayingpolice violence and misconduct by ignoringnumerous cases of police sexually assaultingor threatening to rape women duringthe 1,100 arrests, the largest number inCanadian history, made during the G20demonstrations.

G20 protester Kelly Pflug-Back gets 15 months in prisonNATIONAL POST

One of the most destructive BlackBloc vandals convicted in relation to theToronto G20 summit received a 15-monthprison sentence July 19.

Kelly Pflug-Back, a 23-year-old studentwho attended court in a tight red sweaterand black skirt, grinned at dozens of cheeringsupporters before being led away inhandcuffs. Even after she left the room, manyremained standing with their fists in the air.

The air of quasi-celebrity surroundingPflug-Back terrorized local businessesand smashed police cars during a maskedrampage through the streets of Toronto twoyears ago.

Kelly Pflug-Back captured on video at the 2010G20 demonstrations in Toronto

Throughout the G20 rampage, Pflug-Backand her fellow rioters "cowardly" covered

Judge John McMahon noted Pflug-Back did their faces with masks and effectivelymore than $160,000 in damage to police carsand businesses. She also guided other black-clad protesters to target larger businesses,displaying a “callous disregard" for theemployees within.

damaged the cause of legitimate protesters,Judge McMahon said.

Pflug-Back showed “zero remorse" forthe harm she caused, acting disinterestedthroughout several court appearances.

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IOPERATION 8. TERROR DOWN UNDERNew Zealand government repression against Maori people and their supportersBY VALERIE MORSE

Ka whawhai tonu matou. Ake!Ake! Ake! — “We will fightforever and ever and ever"— Rewi Maniapoto, leader of the armedresistance against colonial settlement inNew Zealand, at the Battle of Orakau 1864

t is hard to imagine the reach of the United555555??? States ifyou have never lived outside of

it. In New Zealand, it is pervasive and5n; simultaneously invisible: ideas, culture, and

laws are imported and imposed. Following9/11, New Zealand (NZ) jumped to ratify itsown version of the US Patriot Act.

Here it was called the TerrorismSuppression Act. In 2002 when itwas passed, Ihad no idea that I would become one of the firstpeople against whom this lawwould be used. In2007, I fotmd out.

More than 300 police carried out “Operation8"—dawn raids on dozens ofhouses all overAotearoa New Zealand. Police claim the raidswere in response to “concrete terrorist threats"from indigenous activists. Along with 16other people, I was held without bail awaitingthe decision of the Solicitor-General whosepermission was required for the police to bringa charge of “participation in a terrorist group,"against us.

i

areas where the training camps were held. Thegrainy imagery shows some people wearingbalaclavas, some carrying firearms, and somepeople carrying flaming objects in what the policesaywas training in throwing Molotov cocktails. Allof this was on Tuhoeland, in the bush. Additionalevidence included intercepted phone calls, textmessages, conversations from bugged vehicles,and a number offirearms found when the raidswere carried out

Despite a massive police propagandacampaign and compliant media, public

The people arrested were primarily Maori (the skepticism emerged almost irnrrrediately.indigenous people); many ofwhom were actively Thousands ofpeople took to the streets in majorinvolved in the struggle for their iwi (tribal)sovereignty. Tame Iti, one ofthe country's most for our freedom was N QW Zela Fl Cl , l(e a Wh tE SettleF CO [Qnla I.

NZ cities and a campaign

well-l<rrown Maori political activists, was deemed launched.the ringleader. The remaining arrestees wereanarchists, including myself, involved in a rangeofworker, environmental, anti-war, and animalrights issues.

The primary allegation was that we had allattended paranrilitary training camps in orderto devise plans and leam the skills to assassinateleading political figures including George WBush, NZ's then Prime Minister, Helen Clark ofthe nominally left-wing Labour Party, and theconservative leader of the opposition Iohn Key(now Prime Minister).

The primary evidence was video stuveillancefrom cameras installed in the bush around the

Amonth later, sittingin states, is fundamentally illegitimate,my prison cell, I listenedastheSolicitor-General and is deeply fearful of its indigenousannounced on nationalradio that he was “unable toauthorize the prosecutionsunder the Terrorism Suppression Act," against us.

Photo by HoolietaNew Zealand solidarity demo in support of Maori and anarchist defendants in Operation 8 trial

legislation reverses the burden ofproof forpossession ofweapons. In other words, you haveto prove you are innocent - or in legal terms thatyour possession is “lawful, proper and sufficient.’'It is a high threshold.

A racist operation from start to finish

On the day ofthe raids, police and special forcescarried out a paramilitary invasion and blockadeofthe Tuhoe village ofRuatoki. They stopped,searched and profiled every car and person tryingto leave the valley.

Tuhoe are one ofthe largest iwi in New Zealand

population.with some 40,000 claiming Tuhoe ancestry.

I screamed with unimaginable joy. They could not Theyhave remained in their ancestral lands incharge us with being terrorists. The following day,

illegal possession ofweapons including Molotovcocktails.

Unlike the U.S. where the right to bear armsisguaranteed by the Constitution, in NZ, arms

Te Urewera in the North Island. They continuewe were released on bail still facing charges of to live in their traditional ways, have communal

ownership ofland, a subsistence lifestyle ofhrmting,fishing and growing kumara (sweet potato), andspeakMaori as their first language.

Theynever signed the TreatyofWaitangi, the »

FIFTH ESTATE

1840 document that the state claims is the basisofits legitimacy and sovereignty in the land itoccupies. As far as Tuhoe are concemed, they neverceded sovereignty to anyone.

The colonial historybetween Tuhoe and theNZ govemment is the same as what occurred inother European occupations ofnative people'shomelands: extreme state brutality, landconfiscation, cultural annihilation, and laterattempts at assimilation. More than a million acresofland was stolen from Tuhoe and tinned intonational park.

In I916, the colonial police force invaded Tuhoeterritory to arrest a man named Rua Kenana, whowas regarded as a prophet byhis people. Ostensibly,the police wanted to arrest Rua forviolating liquorlaws. In reality, he was a threat to the state.

Rua actively urged his people to refuse to fightinWorldWar I for a govermnent and the BritishEmpire that had stolen their land and killed theirpeople. During this raid, Rua’s son and another manwere murdered bypolice, and Rua was arrested.He was subsequently tried and sentenced for theminor offence ofresisting arrest to ayear ofhardlabour followed by 18 months imprisonment.

This incident and others like it loom large, notjust in Tuhoe history, but in the memories ofoldpeople still alive. Colonization is not ancient historyfor Tuhoe; it is a recurrent reality.

Today, Maori sit at the bottom ofevery socialindicator. In particular, NewZealand has thedubious distinction ofimprisoning its indigenouspopulation at one ofthe highest rates in the world,roughly 634 per 100,000 people, compared witha rate of 192 per 100,000 for the majoritypakeha(white) population. Despite its self-delusionalimage ofharmonious race relations, the statisticstell a very different story.

Tame Iti, arrested on the day ofthe recentraids, is a leading proponent ofMaori sovereignty.He routinelyuses theatrics for political goals. In2005, he orchestrated a re-enactrnent ofthe 1860sscorched earth policies carried out against hispeople byusing burning cars. As a result ofhisactivities, he has been the subject ofsustained statesmveillance.

For nearly fortyyears, Tame has held camps inthe native forest, sometimes to help young peopleget out ofgangs, sometimes to teach alienatedMaori traditional ways, sometimes to help peopleovercome drug and alcohol dependency, andsometimes to discuss politics and introduce pakehato life in the forest He seeks to make links betweenactivists throughout the world and the Tuhoestruggle.

The illegal evidenceOver the past five years, a painful and

Photo by Gil Hanly

Maori activist Tame iti outside of High Courtafter guilty verdict.

expensive legal process has played out throughthe cotuts. The state brought an additional chargeofparticipation in an organized criminal groupagainst five of the defendants. These five - Tame,Rangi, Urs, Emily and Tuhoe — were deemed to bethe ringleaders.

A crucial point came in September 201 1 whenthe NZ Supreme Court issued a ruling on theadmissibility ofpolice evidence. We challengedthe legality ofpolice video surveillance camerasplaced around Ruatoki including in the localmarae (a meeting house similar to a church).

The court smprisingly ruled all of the videoevidence had been illegally obtained, butunfortunately, the case didn't end there. In NZ,evidence must be both illegal and unreasonablein order to be excluded. The court said that theevidence could not be used against those ofuscharged onlywith the firearms offenses, but itcould be used against the five since they facedboth firearms charges and the more seriouscriminal group charge.

By the time of the decision, Tuhoe had diedfrom stress related the case.

In the week that followed, the state dropped allofthe charges against the 13 facing only firearmscharges. The remaining four would go to trial.

Thetfial

Eventually, a jury trial was secured, althoughthe state had sought to deny even that. The trialran for five weeks. The illegal video was played onthe national nightly news for all to consume.

Despite charges being dropped against 13 ofus, we were still verymuch a part of the state'scase, and evidence gathered against each ofuswas used against our comrades on trial. Thecriminal group charge is one ofthe worst pieces

of law since it is effectively a guilt by associationcharge, and no actual criminal offence needs tohave happened or even planned.

Nevertheless, despite the state's imaginativenarrative of terror and mayhem, the jury didn'tquite buy it. They couldn't come to a decisionon the criminal group charge; it was a hung jury.However, they did find the defendants guilty onfirearms charges, hardly surprising given the highthreshold for any person to prove their innocence.

At sentencing, it was clear that the judgebought the state's story. He said a privatemilitia was being established. Despite firearmsconvictions routinely receiving a fine, Tame andRangi were sentenced to two and a halfyears inprison. Urs and Emily, deemed by the judge to befollowers rather than leaders, were sentenced tonine months home detention.

ltneverends

Court battles are defensive by nature, andwhile we are tied up trying to stay out of jail weare not engaged in the struggles on the streets,in the forests, or in the factories that matter tous. That was one aim of Operation 8: repressionofdissent--remove lots of troublesome peoplefor a long time, use fear as a tactic to deterothers, and disrupt people's lives by makingit costly to defend against charges whichultimately were contrived.

The other aim of Operation 8 was thereinforcement of institutional white supremacyby violence. The anti-terror raids were aimed atthe entire Maori community. Many saw themsimply as a continuation of a legacy of statebrutality and the repression of aspirations fortino rangatiratanga—sovereignty.

New Zeland, like all white settler colonialstates is fundamentally illegitimate, and isdeeply fearful of its indigenous population. Thestate is founded on racist theft and violence. Theindigenous peoples of the world are the greatestthreat to the illusion of legitimacy for nation-states.

Operation 8 was an exercise in reminding NZindigenous people who is in control, consigningthe Maori worldview to irrelevancy, andrepeating a history from which we seem foreverunable to leam or escape.

Valerie Morse is a Wellington, NewZealand-basedanarchist and anti-war activist. She grew up inTucson, Arizona and misses the beautiful Sonorandesert everyday. She loves kitty cats, gardening,political hip hop, and social revolution.

FIFTH ESTATE

Three from Cleveland 4 SentencedGovernment provocateur invented crime claims more victims.JENNY FROM SACRAMENTOPRISONER SUPPORT

Three entrapped anarchists, part oftheCleveland 4, were sentenced November 21 toharsh but lighter prison tenns than what thefederal prosecutors requested for an allegedconspiracy to blow up a highway bridge nearCleveland on May Day.

Three of the Cleveland 4, Douglas Wright,Connor Stevens, and Brandon Baxter, received11 years, eight years, and almost ten yearsrespectively on federal terrorism charges, followedby lifetime probation. The fourth, Joshua Stafford,as ofthis writing, is in a federal facility undergoingcompetency testing.

By contrast, a week earlier, a Texas TechUniversity Saudi student was sentenced to lifein federal prison for a bomb plot that includedformer President George W; Bush's Dallas home.

The group was arrested May 1 by a swarm offederal agents. Theywere immediately identifiedas anarchists by the govemment and demonizedby the media.

Anthony Hayne, arrested alongwith the 4,began cooperating with the govemment soonafter his arrest, hoping for a less severe sentencethan what the others faced. Ironically, his pleadeal included a 15 to I9 year sentence. As ofthiswriting, he has withdrawn his guilty plea

Hayne's cooperation is sad for many reasons,but perhaps most distinctly, 1) for its effect on hiscodefendants who had already felt the sting ofbetrayal once in this ordeal, and who definitelytook his cooperation into consideration whendeciding to plead guilty and, 2) because none ofthem, Hayne included, should have been arrestedin the first place.

The Cleveland 4 were entrapped.The federal affidavit in the case states that a

38-year-old infonnant, Shaquille Azir, was directedby the FBI to attend an event “held by a protestgroup” (the “protest group" was Occupy Clevelandand the event was an act ofcivil disobedience).

Azir was sent there in large part because ofthe reported presence ofanarchists. It was at thisevent in October 201 lthat he met and fonneda “friendship” with Douglas Wright. Less flian ayear later, Douglas and four others were fightingtrumped up charges.

The informant had to workhard to bring thiscase to the govemment. Azir provided one ofthe

defendants with Adderall (kickstarting a recentlyovercome addiction), he gave all ofthem alcohol(two ofthem were Lurderage), shared his vehicle,and brought them a computer.

Some ofthe defendants did not have a home ora stable income. The infonnant provided shelterand employment to at least three ofthe five. Azirsupplied the explosives and the know-howwhileapplying various kinds ofpressure on them.The young men faced incredibly manipulativeinducements from an informant - an infonnantwho was paid and directed by the government. Itappears as though the sentencing judge took thisinto accountwith his relatively lenient sentence.

Tragically, the Cleveland 4 case represents analarming trend in post-9/ l I policing. In recentyears, the number ofcases involving “pre-emptiveprosecutions" has dramatically increased. Inalmost all ofthese cases the same story lineunfolds.

A govemment infonnant is sent into acommtmity the govemment identifies as a target.Often this includes environmentalists, animalrights activists, anarchists, and, most often since9/1 1, Muslims.

The informant befriends people within thecommunity. These are often people they perceiveto be weak orwho can be easily manipulated. Veryrarely, ifever, are these the core organizers. Then,with the help ofthe govemment, often includingthe people who will end up prosecuting the case- the infonnant quite literally creates a crime and

The Cleveland A are four Occupy Cleveland activists, Brandon, Connor, Doug and Joshua “Skelly.”

entraps their new “friends” in it The infonnantwillnever be prosecuted for the crime they created.They are often working for the govemment inan effort to work offold charges, or for leniencyin another case, such as Azirwho has severaloutstanding charges.

The case ofEric McDavid in 2006 was a strikingexample ofthis kind ofpre-emptive prosecution(See supporteric.org). Ayoung informant waspaid over $65,000 to create a crime and entrap Ericin it. No action was ever carried out, but in 2008Eric was sentenced to almost 20 years forwhatamounts to thought crime. In May, people werearrested in Chicago during NATO protests andcharged with serious felonies. Those arrested weretargeted for their political views and associations.

The government is manufacturing crimeto instill fear in the population at large, whichthey hope will justify the demonization ofentiremovements ofpeople.

We need to stand strong — together — in theface ofrepression. We need to ensure that whenthe state targets and attacks our friends andcomrades, we're with them every step of the way.Visit: cleveland4solidarity.org for more info.

Jenny works with Sacramento PrisonerSupport and June 11th. They have justissued Government Repression, PrisonerSupport, 157pp., available from 18LPrinting, Denver Colo.; $10, order throughpandlprinting.com. FE review next issue.

FIFTH ESTATE

BY MILES POUCHEZ'

A Iuly 13 New York Times article, “That'sNo Phone. That's My Tracker," by Peter Maass,suggests that we should consider smartphones,computers, and other connected devices astracking machines rather than appliances ofpersonal convenience.

The manufacturers ofthese now ubiquitousgadgets claim that aggregating data aboutindividuals favors the consumer, so when youvisit a web page, it might display ads relevant toyour tastes and needs. But it's widely speculatedthat far more sinister use is made of thisinformation—that the govemment enjoys a cozyrelationship with the private data gatherers, thatinfonnation can and will be used against us, and/or to the advantage of the military-industrialcomplex.

I assume that Amazon and the NSA know atruckload of tangential infonnation about me;that is, who I befriend and communicate with,the web pages I visit, where I am and where I'vebeen, the stores at which I spend money and theitems purchased therein. But they're still missingthe most important component; that is, who amI, what do I intend to do? IfI purchase fertilizer,am I making a bomb or helping my crops? If Ipurchase boots with deep heels and correspondwith persons with Arabic names, am I a terrorist?

Let's say my eldest granddaughter, AprilRose, joins the Peace Corps. April is already anaccomplished farmer, so she travels to Africa,proselytizing for sustainable agriculture. Whilethere, April befriends local persons her sameapproximate age; many are illiterate, andrelatively unsophisticated in Westem terms.

Some are reluctant rebels who, as women,can face recrimination by death, rape, stoning,starvation. They live in a pressure cooker ofmaledominance, and without future. During infonnalconversations, April argues againstviolenceor suicide so she should be judged as a worthyasset by the US govemment; a loyal Americanambassador attempting to win hearts and minds,spreading the gospel ofpeace.

However, a govemment, any government,decides that April might be a threat, not becausethey really know anything about her moralcompass, but because her spreadsheet calculatesa suspicious result. In an over-simplifiedattempt to decide whether she's enemy orfriend, the govemment decides to intercept herconversations as best they can.

Problem is, April is technically savvy andsuspects her friends are being scrutinized byevil forces everywhere. In all communicationshe uses various encrypted (read: privacyprotected) mechanisms so strong that even the

NSA probably can't decipher all the content.Contemporary computer science suggests theyknow her physical circrunstance (accurately) andmight be deciphering nigger words plucked fromvarious data streams (inaccurately/partially),including encrypted voice (Skype). We reallycan't grasp the extent ofNSA capability, butwhenthe mechanisms of encryption are cracked, we'Hbe the last to know.

In this equation, consider the deploymentofweaponized drones in all shapes, sizesand capabilitywhich will soon outstrip thepresumed benefit ofhuman intervention. Whena yotmg drone pilot is incapacitated because ofa hangover, or a quota is missed, or the mastertarget map spikes beyond capacity, Gen Xflips a switch and allows the robots to think forthemselves, or even as an interconnected hive.It's incorrect to assume that algorithm will sparelife because of a compassionate sub-routine(read Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez, whereinsinister, deployable math, is modeled on theactivity of aggressive insects).

April's life ledger might not meetanyreasonable standard ofproof, but thesurreptitiously obtained and commerciallyavailable information is fed to a target probabilitylist when sufficiently elevated by algorithm.Let's add it up. She lives in an African nationwhere dangerous persons are known to exist, sheeven shares meals with them. She arranges thepurchase offertilizer and, most importantly, shecontinues frequent conversations with her multi-national friends after leaving Africa. April's lifeand death spreadsheet; simplified, incomplete,misleading.

Although April aims to convert her new socialgroup to peaceful purposes, the aggregatedcontent ofher life is, at best, 50 per centdecipherable (looks for keywords, like bomb,or jihad, analyzes compression algorithms forprobable content, etc.). After leaving Africa, April

continues to contact them from all over the globe.April's life and death spreadsheet; simplified,incomplete, and misleading; beta.

Ifin the US, she might be tracked, harassed, orarrested. Ifstill in Africa, she and her friends arevaporized by an invisible, silent drone launchedfrom thousands ofmiles away designed toremove her by automated, tangential analysis.

Think this is fanciful or improbable? Ask amember of a wedding party in Afghanistan orYemen that was just blown to bits by a droneoperator in Colorado Springs right before she leftduty in time for Happy Hour at the local saloon.And, what happens when Iran, Russia, China,Syria, gangs, thugs, mafia, and/or other outliersdeploy similar, competing technology?

Don't blink, it's happening already, right underour noses.

We live in a world ruled by govemment anda gaggle of onmipotent corporations makingfundamental, serious judgments about our fellowhumans by inadequate proxy. They have thecapability to gather enough information about usto sell products or kill ten thousand miles away,butwe have no direct knowledge. We are in theircrosshairs. Nonetheless, when the numbersdictate, they jail us, take our money, make ourlives miserable, foreclose our homes, or, if theythink the nrnnbers dictate, extreme action, and alife is gone here or anywhere in the world.

Whose granddaughter, nation, politicalmovement will be next? The enemy algorithmdoesn'twait on sufficiently robust technology,rather it tums bits to bombs when the software isdeemed good enough. Popular opinion and anendless stream ofapocalyptic news forces/allowsaggression without proof. Govemments and theircorporate overlords jail/kill with circumstantialevidence, incredibly flawed human observation,and no moral mandate.

Death by spreadsheet.

FIFTH ESTATE

THE EABY JOHN ZERZAN

Last remaining lair ofunparalleled wildness. Too big to fail?The whole world is being objectified, but Melville reminds us ofall that

remains. “There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea." What couldbe more tangible, more of a contrastwith being lost in the digital world,where we feel we can never properly come to grips with anything?

Oceans are about time more than space, “as if there were a correlationbetween going deep and going back," he writes. The Deep is solemn;linking, in some way, all that has come before. Last things and first things.“Heaven,” by comparison, is thin and faintly unserious.

“Over All the Face ofEarth Main Ocean Flowed," armounced the poemby John Milton. Given its 71 percent predominance on this planet, whyis our world called Earth instead of Sea? Much of the land, in fact, couldbe defined as littoral areas where land and sea meet. The sea is a texturedplace, infinite in its moods, forms, energies—and not so easily de-textured.

But we see what happens when culture is privileged over place. The sea,where all life began just this side of four billion years ago, must still sustainus. Not only are its waters the original source of life, it also shapes theclimate, weather, and temperature of the planet, and therefore the status ofterrestrial species.

Kant saw truth as akin to an island surrounded by a stonny sea; watermight “run wildly" and drown reason. Chaos, disorder were always to befeared and brought under control. In Milton's paradise, the ocean is chafingunder restraint, suggesting that it can yield truth when freed.

The power ofnature is to be respected, not domesticated.We come to life in water, in the amniotic fluid. Blood—and tears—are

salty like the sea, menstrual cycles like the tides of the matemal sea, ourmother. The sea is mountains rolling, sometimes calm and tempered.

For Swinburne, “the storm sounds only/More notes ofmore delight. . . ."So many qualities; even phosphorescent at times, as I have seen on the Seaof Cortez. The seascape shows a magnificent array offluctuating aspectsand energies.

John Ruskin found therein “to all human minds the best emblem ofunwearied unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tamelessunity of the sea."

If the earth is alive, the oceans are its most living parts. The sea whispers,croons, bellows in its rmnumbered moods, always the “ground note of theplanet's undersong," as Califomia poet George Sterling put it.

The very pulse of the sea, not only its perpetual motion, has us imaginingthat it is drawing breath. Inspirations and exhalations of a living, ifunimaginably vast animal; many have written of the sea as a fellow creature.English poet and novelist Malcohn Lowry recorded this meditation: “Eachdrop into the sea is like a life, I thought, each producing acircle in theocean, or the medium of life itself, and widening into infinity."

In the deep, there is beauty and music, the sweeping surge of it is amatchless strength, a tireless spirit of freedom. Writing in his joumal in1952, Thomas Merton noted that everywave of the sea is free. We mightseek a heart like the sea: ever open and at liberty.

American anthropologist and philosopher Loren Eiseley decided that“if there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Why does rurmingwater, even a fountain or an aquarium, soothe or even heal? Far morepotent, incomparable, is the spell of the ocean.

“I was bom in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps fewmen have studied it, neglecting all else," Joshua Slocum revealed in his late19th century account, Sailing Alone Around the World. For many, the seademands a deep loyalty, prompted by sheer wonder and the promise ofpeak experiences.

A sense ofbeing fully animal and fully alive. Ocean-hearted‘? The sea'sstaggering presence, its pure openness, brings on very powerful sensations.Rimbaud perhaps went ftuthest in trying to capture it in words:

I have recovered it.What? Eternity.It is the seaMatched with the sun.As the yotmg James Joyce evoked the sea: “The clouds were drifting

above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him: andthe grey warm air was still: and a wild new life was singing in his veins. . .. On and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to thesea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him."

The sea, our deepest origin, calls to us. Sea-bom, we are drawn seaward.Alain Corbin, discussing the work ofAdolphe de Custine, recormts thelatter's orientation toward that which “instinctively relates to our origins. .. ." Namely, that the “sight of the open sea. . .contributes to the discovery ofthe deep irmer self."

There is an exalting and revelatory experience possible in such aconfrontation with the elements. We are humbled at the shore, on thewaves, our presence a question. “The completeness and certainty ofnaturemakes life bearable, less anguished," as American anthropologist RichardNelson has written.

When Iwas a small child at mid-century, our family sometimes drovewest about sixty miles to visit my Dad's brother Ed on the central Oregoncoast. My brother and I competed to be the first to see the ocean and cry“I see it!" It was a thrill to catch that first glimpse, every time. About thirtyyears later, I came back to Oregon from Califomia and worked in Newportat a shrimp cannery, near places called Boiler Bay and Devil's Punchbowl.

I don't think it's stuprising that one can feel giddy at the massive sight.The Pacific encompasses fully one-third of the globe, 64 million squaremiles. Twice the size of the Atlantic. The absolute, (anti-)monumental Thereof it. .

Is it not true that we are all somehow called to the sea by its lure,persuasion, gravity? Until he was forty, John Ruskin was drawn to have“merely stared all day long at the tumbling and creaming strength of thesea." A century later, Robert Frost wrote: “The people along the sand/Alltum and look one way./They tum their back on the land. They look at thesea all day." Where every wave is different, and the heart and soul expand.

Loren Eiseley felt the GulfofMexico pulling him southward as he lazedin Nebraska's Platte River. And more than that: “I was water. . . ." In 1826,Heinrich Heine had expressed a similar union: “I love the sea as my soul.Often, it even seems to me that the sea really is my soul." Swimming in theocean involves an “intimate immensity," to borrow a term from Frenchphilopsher Gaston Bachelard. It comrects with vastness and is inward, yetalso a vigorous and robust experience. There can be challenges and perils,

FIFTH ESTATE

of course.Robert Louis Stevenson described a Hawai'ian

woman who swam for nine hours “in a high sea,"carrying the body ofher husband home. AlbertCamus confided, “I have always felt I lived onthe high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royalhappiness."

According to a 2006 American HistoricalReview article, the maritime dimension hasbecome a subject in its own right. “No longeroutside time, the sea is being given a history, evenas the history of the world is being retold fromthe perspective of the sea," it says. Unfortunately,its arrival on the stage has occurred on the heelsand in the context ofanother inauguration,heralded by Gennan essayist Gottfried Benn:“Now the series ofgreat insoluble disasters itselfis beginning."

The fate ofthe once freshenirrg sea is nowthat of crashing fish numbers, accelerated lossofmarine and coastal habitats on a global scale,garbage gyres hundreds ofmiles across, dyingcoral reefs, growing dead zones (e.g., hypoxiczones in the northem GulfofMexico), to cite afew disastrous developments long in the making.

Water is “the most mythological of theelements," wrote historian Charles Kerenyi, andthe literature of the sea arguably began withHomer in the early Iron Age, 8th century B.P.He wrote of its lonely austerity, “the sterile sea,"a perspective that is certainly already that ofcivilization, poised against the natural world.

The sea was by now merely a means, apassageway to increased domination, newconquests; large war fleets were-well-established.Aphrodite, goddess of love, arose from sea foam,but somehow failed to carry the day.

Seafarirrg is far older than history; it predatesdomestication/civilization by hrurdreds ofthousands ofyears. Humans were navigating theoceans vastly earlier than we were riding horses,for instance. Homo erectus, about 800,000years ago, crossed scores ofmiles ofocean toinhabit the island ofFlores in the Indonesianarchipelago.

And even today, long voyages on the opensea are made by people with no use for metals.The explorer David Lewis marveled at a Pacificnative who found his way “by means of a slightswell that probably had its origins thousands ofmiles away. . . . He had made a perfect landfall inthe half-mile gap [between two islands], havingnavigated for between 45 and 48 miles without asingle glimpse ofthe sky."

Thor Heyerdahl of late 1940s Kon-Tikiexpedition fame made use of the “Incas' simpleand ingenious way of steering a raft" on hisimpressive South Pacific odyssey. Interestingly,

while the Incas revered the sea, the Mayas madescant mention of it-—possibly because the Mayashad a written language and the Incas did not.

Joshua Sloctun's account ofhis solo sailaround the globe notes how the South Pacificislanders “take what nature has provided for

mastery ofnature, as well as the opening act ofchronic contemporary disasters.

Peter Matthiessen's novel, Far Tortuga,is a troubled meditation on the sea, with itsbackground ofa Caribbean region stripped ofseaturtles, fish, timber, etc. by the 1970s. In fact, John

The quiet gracefulness of sailing ships, and theseamanship skills of their crews, were ushered out inthe 19th century in favor of graceless vessels, noisyand forced, like moving factories.them," and “have great reason to love theircountry and fear the white man's yoke, foronce harnessed to the plow their life would nolonger be a poem." And, his further South Pacificobservation: “As I sailed further from thecenterofcivilization I heard less and less ofwhatwouldand what would not pay."

Meanwhile, carmon-armed sailing strips had“heralded a fundamental advance in Europe'splace in the world" in terms ofcontrol ofoceanictrade routes. In the late 1400s, Portugal andSpain, the first global naval powers, competedfor vast stretches of the Atlantic, Indian, andPacific oceans. The world-wide commons ofthe seas was rather rapidly disenchanted andinstrurnentalized as the era ofmodem historydawned. Its relative solitude, silence, spiritualwealth and intimacy gave way to the onslaught ofglobalization, and then industrial globalization.

The quiet gracefulness of sailing ships, and theseamanship skills of their crews, were usheredout in the 19th century in favor ofgracelessvessels, noisy and forced, like moving factories.How much globalized industrial existence ispossible under simple sail?

Voyages with time enough to know oceansand heavens, "taking what wind and wavehave to offer. Adventures, not timetables andtechnological disasters.

A sentiment opposed to the Machine was thesea as archetype and key source of the sublimein the Romantic era. The powerful sea paintingsofWinslow Homer and J.M.W. Tumer certainlycome to mind. But celebrated or not, the oceanswere being targeted for domestication. In ChildeHarold, Byron wrote: “Man marks the earth withruin—his control/Stops with the shore.’'

Later in the century his words no longer rangtrue. Joseph Conrad dated the end of the old seafrom 1869, when the Suez Canal was completed.In 1912, an iceberg quickly dispatched thelargest moving object on the planet. Titanic'sdemise was a blow to confidence in the complete

Steinbeck described Japanese fishing dredgesat work off the coast ofMexico in 1941, “literallyscraping the bottom clean" with a ravening,wasteful industrial process.

The assault on the sea and its inhabitants isnothing new, but is always being intensified byadvancing technology. An IBM SmartCloud adof2012 boasts of “smarter” computing systemsthat enable fishermen “to auction their catchwhile still at sea," to speed up the decimation ofthe oceans.

Long ago we had few things, on the waterespecially. Now, we take our profusion ofpossessions with us. Mass society comes alongon the voyage of industrial tourism. “Voyage"comes from via: away. But there is no more away.It is no coincidence that the survival struggles ofindigenous peoples and aquatic life have reacheda generally similar level ofextremity.

“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is notfull," But Ecclesiastes 1:7 is no longer accurate.Rising sea levels, perceptible since 1930, are analarming fact. “Other sea-cities have faltered,/and striven with the tide,/ other sea-cities havestruggled/ and died," observed the Americanpoet H.D. Trillions of tons ofwater are now asteady flow ofpolar ice cap melting.

Many studies and new books recount what isstarldy clear. Rising temperatures, acidificationlevels and pollution; the North Sea has warmedto the point where tropical fish and birds livein the ljords ofNorway. The thermohalinecirculafion (vertical current movement) in theNorth Atlantic is weakening markedly.

Damaged, clearly, but not domesticated yet.A couple of lines from two anonymous poets:indicating the ocean, “Give me fields that noman plows/ The farm that pays no fee," and “Theocean's fields are fair and free,/ There are no rentdays on the sea!"

To watch a fine surf for hours, to recall direct

See THE SEA, page 24

FIFTH ESTATE

T e telepathic connection among all dolphins in the sea, according to New6- "t-‘ii From Page 23 Zealand environmentalist Wade Doak.

"I will go back to the great sweet mother,/ Mother and love ofmen, thesensory experience—and ponder its severe diminution. Many have called sea," wrote Swinburne. The sea has many voices. “Deep calleth unto deep,"the sea the finest university of life, free from the never-satisfied network of to quote Psalms 52:7. All of life is connected, and the “oceanic feeling” aptlyspeech and the symbolic. Paul Valéry felt that “the quickening sea/ Gives expresses a sense ofdeep bonds, a oneness.back my soul. . .O salty potency!/ I'll rim to the wave and from it be rebom!" Not accidentally is “oceanic” the term employed to denote a profound

There is a kind ofpurification motif that manywriters have touched on connectedness. Robinson Ieffers told us that “mere use," meaning thevis-a-vis the sea. Rimbaud, for example, referred to the sea “which I loved as technological, the fabricated world, “won't cover up the glory." The glory ofthough it should cleanse me of a stain." Jack Kerouac's first novel mentions the sea, the glory of the non-fabricated world. He celebrated the wholeness“the way this Protean ocean extended its cleansing forces up, down, and in of life and the universe, counseling “Love that, not man/ Apart from that."a cyclorama to all directions." Also remember, from the French May days of 1968, “Sous les pavés, la

The once-scrubbed seas, soaking up the crime ofcivilization. John plage." (“Under the cobblestones, the beach.’') to mark their desire.Steinbeck saw that “a breakwater is usually a dirty place, as though On his Inca-inspired raft, Thor Heyerdahl discovered a deep truth.tampering with the shoreline is obscene and impractical to the cleansing “Whether it was 1947 B.C. or A.D. suddenly became ofno significance. Weaction of the sea." For Heyerdahl, the Pacific “had washed and cleansed lived, and that we felt with alert intensity. We realized that life had been fullboth body and soul," echoing Euripedes' words: “The sea washes away and for men before the technical age also--indeed, fuller and richer in manycleanses every human stain." ways than the life ofmodem man."

Its own denizens show us so very much. The porpoises that always prefer And, we still have the sea, just possibly too big to fail. “Cease not yoursailboats; the singing humpback whales; dolphins, with their extraordinary moaning you fierce old mother," wrote Walt Whitman, whose truest poetrybrain size and intelligence. Did not whales and dolphins retum to the so often evoked the sea.oceans, having found land life unsatisfactory? There is some kind of open Let's join with Byron: “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!”

cart submission“ rrrrhrsrz-re #189 springzerz ' ' Deadline March 1 Publication date April 1

Your ideas for news arti.cle)s;.'.essays. and art are “welcome. Srubbnit5 pieces and proposals for l.onger,essa*ys. along withfgraphics. and rlphogtogralpintgtotl. V .'1;.i;__- . fe@fifthestate.org _or-rFifft_h- Estate. PO-Box 201i0T1=6,_.Ferndale,:-MI482210;">U.§A.['.Please_.

" C I “Submission 389" on on the subject line of-email. ' is F y -1» r

FIFTH ESTATE

SCHOOLS

Kicking theAnimal Out ofYou

ifth Estate staffer, playwright, and madcap prankster,the late Pat Halley, once wrote in these pages, “The

purpose ofeducation is to kick the animal out ofyou."' That is, to make individuals confonn to a societybased on constraint of0ne's desires and autonomy.

This is true to one degree or another ofevery culture althoughwithin the modem state and capitalist social order, this iscarried out to the extreme by the necessities of their definitions.

Every society seeks to reproduce itselfby inculcating intoits next generation itsfundamental values -and version ofreality. 4/

In one such as ours,where everything thatit means to be humanhas been grotesquelytwisted to the needsofthe ruling order,formal educationteaches unquestioningrespect for authority,acceptance ofhierarchies, carrying out ~-~""-"-“"§3“'~»“’~7~;1.>*_;;—;_tasks thatbenefit others %>\"“'-'~

\-:._.".- _'

butharmyourselfand “Write ‘What I "rue! You To Wriw"the planet, adherence towork inwhichyou have no interest, measurement in abstractions,

andnationalism, an inherentvalue in the productionand consumption ofcormnodities, religious mysticism, and,perhaps the most insidious, that the current system is the onlypossible manner inwhich the world can be constructed.

This is what is taught in the best ofschools. However,capitalism's trajectory increasinglyhas less need for a masseducated, compliantworkforce as it didwhen public educationwas initiated in the 19th century.

Jobs disappear never to retum, so schools in the classesbeneath the middle becomewarehouses for the poor and near-poor designed to keep students offthe streets, out ofthe shrinkingworkforce, and hopefullymold them into a passive populationwhichwon't object to their fate.

At the same time, we recognize and salute the manyradicalpublic school teachers who subvert their assigned mission byteaching a questioningofauthority and received knowledge.

The essays in this section look at the nature ofschools andwhat altematives are available to those who won't accept thesedefinitions for their children or communities. This is only anopening to the conversation about radical perspectives oneducation.

We welcomeyour comments on our Letters page.

hy do we send our kids toschool? We've been told thatit is in elementary school

. . that the bases of learning toread, write, and do math are acquired,although anyone who spends anytime with children can clearly see thatchildren want to leam what we do.They want to leam to read ifthey see usreading, to write if they see us writing,and to count if they see us cormting.

What do theywant our kids tolearn? As observed by Jan D. Matthewsobserved in Towards the DestructionofSchooling, the modem school is asocial institution that was created in thecontext of the development of industrialcapitalist society. Today, we can easilysee that the objective behind the currentreforms is to make school mesh withthe values of advanced capitalism:management by projects, competencies,higher education, flexibility, etc.

It aims to prepare a work force that iseasily manipulated and can adapt to theneeds of the economy. The educationsystem does not aspire to fonn freeand autonomous individuals. Societyis the antithesis of a community that isautonomous and self-sufficient.

So, how do children leam? Everyday, they watch the activities of theadults around them and watch howrelationships between people ftmction.Children raised in a capitalist societyleam to accept its social norms, even

What do we learn in school thatcouldn't be learned elsewhere?

if they are in contact with a differentdiscourse.

Children leam in different ways, eachone having their own learning style. Theyleam by listening to us, observing us,imitating and experimenting. Childrenleam every day, all the time. Even ifyou don't realize it, your children arestudying you at this very moment. Theymay be more verbal, or more visual, orboth equally, self-learning or needinghelp, and they leam the subjects thatare interesting to them, and at their ownrhythm.

So then, why do we bring our childrento school? School is often seen as anestablishment that acquires studentsso that the teachers can give them theirlessons collectively. But if they don'tgo to school, they'll be ignorant andmaladapted, we hear from the mouthsof some.

According to several parentspracticing home schooling or“tmschooling," the educational materialofone week ofprimary or secondaryschool can be reduced to about 8 to 10hours a week The rest of the time, we aretaught to be submissive and to fear theauthority ofthe teacher, ofthe director,of the social worker, ofyouth protectionservices, ofthe police detention centersand ofjuvenile court

See EDUCATION, page 26

FIFTH ESTATE

EducationFrom page 25

At school, discipline is at the center ofthe educational project

Hierarchical society is primarily based on thedomestication ofhuman beings. According toradical enviromnentalist DenickJensen, obligatoryschooling lasts longer and longerbecause “ittakes that long to sufficientlybreak the will ofthechild. It's not easy to discomrect children from ntheir desires, to disconnect them from their ownexperiences ofthe world in order to prepare themfor miserable and painful workconditions that theywill be forced to endure"

The dominant approach to schooling hadalways been pedagogical fonnalism, that is, anapproach that emphasizes strict discipline andlearning by memorization, even ifthe latestrefonns quietly try to take a distance from this.

According to a Foucault-inspired analysis,mandatory schooling under the control of the staterepresents a network ofsurveillance -and coercionmethods in order to standardize the particularways of learning and acting.

By accepting their social role as agents ofthestate, teachers employ these practices highlightthe notion that the adults own the child, that theyhave legitimate control over children. Childrenare made to understand that an authority which isimposed on them must be respected.

Teachers knowvery well that in the school yard,children will reproduce and give legitimacy to thepower relationships experienced in class for theirovm interests. The children are thus a populationto control, to surveil, to evaluate, and discipline;school allows for this. Discipline is not just uniqueto school; it is also found in the factory, the office,the prison, and the psych ward.

School as a social institution

School is a social institution that intervenesdirectly in the process ofthe socialization ofchildren. Socialization is defined as a processduringwhich an individual learns and interiorizesthe norms and the values ofthe society to whichthey belong in order to adopt specific socialbehaviors. This process is necessary for thereproduction ofthe social order.

A hierarchical society needs school to teachchildren to be submissive and to renounce theirdesires, so that children adopt behaviors thatsupport the established order. School socializationis primary and principal socialization, since it

begins at a young age and becomes the maininfluence on the child, supplanting the family.

Institutionalized socialization is above all aresult ofthe constraints imposed by its agents.Interactions between an individual and theirsocial environment are possible, but they remainunder the surveillance and control ofthe stateand corporations since interactions that arenot surveilled risk producing a radical socialtransformation ofsociety.

School is like a pill that helps people adapt tothe madness ofmodem society. We live our life.We don't do homework because this experience isfulfilling in itself, we don't do it on our own tennsor in our own ways, we do it because it is whatweare told we must do.

School imposes a tempo that regiments ourlife (8 am to 4 pm), necessary for the modelingof future docile workers. Parents, busy working,don't have a choice about whether to send theirkids to school or not, and comfort themselvesby believing that their children are receiving anappropriate education.

Instead ofliving at the rhythm oftheircommunity, learning through daily activities andcontributing to the well-being ofthe group, thechild is regirnented by the state as they are beingshaped by it.

To respond to the needs ofproduction, parentsforce their kids to get up early in order to sendthem to school while school puts itself in charge ofestablishing a discipline for the exploited.

It punishes children because they are not sittingproperly, because they talk to their classmates,because they don't listen, because they sleep ontheir desks, because they simply don'twant to doan activity at a specific moment. Since elementaryschool, we are bored and we are given orders.

School, like religion, W and video games,finishes by destroying the child. It kills thecreativity to freely express their desires andfrustrations to instead transfonn them into azombie - an adult, constantly in the process ofmanaging their future, their professional career,their retirement plan, and their funeral - anddenying the present moment.

School forces children to develop anunderstanding ofthe world that corresponds tothe hierarchical organization ofsociety and theuniformity ofknowledge. We are taught that thereis only one correct way to read and write, only oneversion ofhistory, only one correct way to expressoneselfin public.

School insures that the future adultwill beftmctional in our society, that theywill be capableofresponding in the appropriate manner to theirboss, appreciate mass culture, believe in the wordsof technocrats concemed with their security and

the promises ofscientists to resolve enviromnentalproblems. At the end ofhigh school comes thestress ofplanning a future career, lectures on howto have a professional orientation, and dead-endmeetings with the guidance councilor. Withouteven realizing it, you are convinced to go into suchand such field, depending on the needs ofthemarket.

The analysis by Daniel Quinn is veryenlightening in his Schooling: The Hidden Agenda.He notes that “at the heart ofour cultural matrix,all the media tell us that schooling exists to preparechildren for success and for the accomplishmentof their life in our civilization (and they fail evenat that) ."

Reform after reform, school always fails. Quinnthen reverses the question: “Suppose that schoolisn't failing? Suppose that it's doing exactlywhatit's supposed to do?" What are the things that itdoes extremelywell?

First off, it does an excellent job at keepingyouth outside the job market and thus stopsthe country from being flooded by millionsofunemployedyouth because ofa lackofemployment Instead ofbecoming part ofthelabor force at twelve years old, they become activeconsumers, spending thousands ofdollars ofmerchandize from money eamed by their parents.

Duringflre industrialization ofwestem societies,agricultrme required fewer and fewer hands, andyouth found themselves in the streets and alleywaysofthe newirrduslrial cities; in order to keep them offflre streets, whatbetter thing than to force them toattend school?

According to Quinn, the solution was to addnew elements to the curriculum to make schoollonger. The children were never asked if that iswhat they wanted or needed to know, or if they'dnever need to know it. It didn't really matter ifoncelearned, everything is immediately forgotten - thepurpose was to keep them busy.

After the economic crash in 1929, it becamenecessary to keep youth out of the labor market foras long as possible. At the end ofthe Second WorldWar, we started to hear that education shouldinclude a time in community college, ifnecessary,and then in university. They need to always begiven more poems to analyze, more pages ofhistory and literature to read, and more equationsto solve. At the same time, youth continued toleave school without knowing much more thanwhat was learned in elementary school a centuryago and were still not employable.

School isn't failing, it is succeeding but in away that we would prefer not to see. Producinggraduates without competencies, without survivalvalues, and with no other option but to work or dieofhunger. These aren't accidents ofthe system, »

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these are the nature ofthe system.} So, why do we continue to go to school?

For the same reason thatwe don't revolt The power to reward and topunish, to make individuals used to desired ways ofthinking and acting, ispart ofthe goal of integrating the individual into a hierarchical social order.High school is yet another way to make this integrating function moreefficient and more total in its effects. The purpose ofuniversity is to make it sothat the individual better adapts to a new set ofsocial conditions created byadvanced capitalism.

What I formd in universitywasn't individuals who were more intelligentthan the rest ofthe population, but rather multiple pretentious and docileyouth, coming from privileged families, having attended private schools orelite programs, speaking the same language as those who govem us.

University is the place where youth leam to respect the rules ofthe gameimposed by the state. In the student assemblies, we see young careerists andfuture bureaucrats who are interested in building their CV and thus beingin a better social positionwhen they apply for a job in politics, the unions,or the NGO's. At the intellectual level, the students are nothing other thansuperficial beingswho will spend most of their time debating a connnodifiedreality; they learn concepts as though these were concrete things. We cancormt thousands ofincompetent graduates each year.

Coming from privileged environments and private schools, almostall these students take themselves for science-priests, art stars, neuroticpsychologists, joumalist-cops, and politician-dogs. 30 classes, 45 hours a

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class, and there, you get out with a piece ofpaper and a recognition from aprofessional order in exchange for a fee.

Then, you shuffle in a lab always repeating the same gestures or in acenter ofsome kind for pacifyingyouth who have had enough oftheirdysfunctional family and ofthe laws thatblock their access from thethings valued by our society. Ifthat's not satisfying, there's always thepossibility to bow down before your master in a superior position, tothen become the one who watches students from the front ofthe room.University is a factorywhere practical incompetents and specialists incompartmentalized knowledge are produced.

The industrial system has found in the education model a rational way todomesticate the exploited, thus allowing for easier recuperation ofresistanceby redirecting it into institutional channels, like union negotiation orpolitical refonnism. The rebels who have interiorized the values transmittedby school try to retouch the repressive machine, rather than destroy it, anda domesticated child is one who only expresses themselves in the momentthat the teacher (the state) allows them.

Authentic rebellion starts in the streets and then builds altemativesboth to coporatized universities and to the dominant society.

A version of this appeared in "En suspense“, a pamphlet writtenduring the 2012 student strike in Quebec. It was translated for theFifth Estate in Montreal.

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ARE “BEHAVIOR PROBLEIVIS" MORE ACCURATELY REBELLION AGAINST AUTHORITY?

Anti-Authoritarian Personalities Si Standard SchoolsBRUCE E. LEVINE

ark Twain, one ofAmerica's most beloved anti-authoritarians,gave young people sound advice: “Never let your schooling get inthe Way ofyour education."

Do most schools teach us:

' To be self-directed—or directed by others?

~ That relationships should be respectful—or manipulated byrewards and punishments?

' That you can exit from boring and abusive surroundings—or thatyou must endure them?

- That you can choose your path of learning— or that you mustsubmit to any and all authorities?

' To seek the authoritative—or comply with the authoritarian?

The nature ofmost classrooms, regardless of the subject matter,socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders,to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend tocare about things they don't care about, and to realize they are impotent toaffect their situation. Standard schools demand compliance with hierarchy,including compliance with authorities whom one does not necessarilyrespect.

Anti-authoritarian teachers know this. John Taylor Gatto, accepting theNewYork City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, was blunt:

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obeyorders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands ofhumane, caringpeople work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but theabstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.

Authoritarians equate success with gaining the rewards of authorities.Former teacher and school critic Alfie Kohn, in Punished by Rewards,describes entire childhoods tumed into one continuous attempt to preparefor Harvard—“Preparation H."

Kohn tells of speaking to a group of these high-achieving authoritarianstudents. When he was finished, a 16-year-old boy said, “You're tellingus not to just get in a race for the traditional rewards. What else is there?"Kohn reflected that here was a teenager who was highly successful byconventional standards, but ,“there was a large hole where his soul shouldhave been."

By contrast, anti-authoritarian students are often disruptive, bothpassively and actively. And these days, teachers increasingly refer them tomental health professionals who routinely give these kids diagnoses suchas attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and opposition defiantdisorder (ODD).

Today, a yormg Albert Einstein would likely receive an ADHD and anODD diagnosis. Albert didn't pay attention to his teachers and failed his

college entrance examinations twice. However, Einstein biographer RonaldClark (Einstein: The Life and Times) asserts that Albert's problems did notstem from attention deficits but rather from his hatred of authoritarian,Prussian discipline in his schools.

Einstein said, “The teachers in the elementary school appeared to melike sergeants and in the Gymnasium the teachers were like lieutenants."After he did enter college, one professor told Einstein, “You have one fault;one can't tell you anything." The truth is that the anti-authoritarian Einsteindidn't reject all authorities, only the ones that didn't know what they weretalking about.

There is nothing essentially disordered with ADHD labeled kids. As Idocument in Cormnonsense Rebellion, kids labeled with ADHD do payattention when an activity is novel, interests them, or is chosen by them, orwhen they are getting paid for it; and biochemical explanations ofADHDdon't scientifically hold up. These kids, for the most part, simply resistboring tasks that do not interest them or when the only reward is a goodgrade from a teacher. Many ofthem are essentially anti-authoritarians.

What does explain these kids’ classroom behavior? While authoritariansrecoil at the idea ofcomparing school to prison, anti-authoritarian kidsdon't. For these kids, school feels like jail, and they behave similarly toothers who experience subjugation. John Holt's How Children Fail (1964)details this.

Holt reminds us that in Gennan concentration camps many of theprisoners, attempting “to save both their lives and something oftheirdignity, and to resist, despite their impotence, the demands of their jailers. . .[adopted] an air of amiable dull-wittedness, ofsmiling foolishness,ofcooperative and willing incompetence. . . .Told to do something, theylistened attentively, nodded their heads eagerly, and asked questions thatshowed they had not understood a word ofwhat had been said." This samestrategy was also used by enslaved Africans on plantations.

Subjugated people, including anti-authoritarian kids in a classroom,attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their owndesire for dignity. They do this, Holt said, “by putting on a mask, by actingmuch more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying theirrulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their mindsand spirits free of their enslaved bodies."

By “going stupid" in the classroom, children frustrate authorities throughwithdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from thescene, achieving some sense ofpotency — a problematic one, however,as some of these kids begin to believe they actually are stupid or do haveADHD. “Going stupid" is one reason for ADHD and other so-called “mentalillnesses.’'

While anti-authoritarian kids who more passively resist authorities areoften diagnosed with ADHD, young anti-authoritarians who are more openand direct about their resistance to illegitimate authorities are routinelydiagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). The symptoms ofODD include “often actively defies or refuses to complywith adult requestsor rules" and “often argues with adults.’' Only authoritarians don't findit laughable that these “symptoms” constitute a disorder. ODD kids areessentially young anti-authoritarians.

I once consulted with a teacher about an extremely bright eight-year-old »

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boy who routinely defied his teachers and waslabeled with ODD. I suggested that perhaps theboy didn't have a disease, but was just bored.His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed withme. However, she added, “They told us at thestate conference that our job is to get them readyfor the workworld. . . that the children have toget used to not being stimulated all the time ortheywill lose their jobs in the real world." Theteacher told me this quite irmocently, in no wayattempting to make some dark political point

Can standard schools be reformed? Accordingto school critic Jonathan Kozol, teachers wishingto see schools less rigid and less oppressive, “arenot willing to confront that the one, exclusive andhistoricfimction of the system is counter to thesegoals.’'

Kozol reminds us that maintaining ahierarchy and the indoctrination ofworkers toinstitutionalized life—first to the factory and laterto bureaucracy—has always been the clear-cutfunction of the public schools.

In 1844, Horace Mann, the first secretary oftheMassachusetts Board ofEducation, addressedhimself to business interests:

“Could there, in your opinion, be any policeso vigilant and effective, for the protection ofallrights ofperson, property and character, as suchas a sound and comprehensive education andtraining as our system ofcormnon schools couldbe made to impart? . .Would not the payment

ofsufficient tax to make such training universal,be the cheapest means ofself-protection andinsurance?"

I am in my fifties, and I still have nightmaresabout school. When I go into a school to vote, tosee a play, or for some other innocuous reason, Istill get anxious, my stomach gets upset, and I justwant to 11111 from the building. I used to joke thatschool gave me post-traurnatic stress disorder. Butmaybe it's no joke.

A great pain reduction in my young life camewhen the New York City teachers went out onstrike my first year ofjunior high school. But thenthe strike ended, and the authorities decidedto extend class periods to make up for “lostleaming," and the ordinary torture of a school daybecame an extraordinarily torturous one.

Ivan Illich, in his classic Deschooling Society(1970), offers an anti-authoritarian altemativeto standard authoritarian schooling. Instead ofschools there would be:

- Skill Exchanges: Persons list their skillsand the conditions under which they arewilling to serve as models for others whowant to learn these skills.

- Peer Matching: A communication networkwhich permits persons to describe thelearning activity in which they wish toengage in hope offinding a partner for

Il

l

inquiry.

' Professional Educators: Those with areputation as master educators wouldprovide experienced leadership whenlearners came to rough terrain. They wouldnot make curriculum, discipline students,purchase textbooks, plan lessons or keeprecords. They would be advice givers, andbook and apprenticeship recommenders.They would inspire intellectual disciplineand curiosity.

~ Reference Services: Not just libraries,but farms, laboratories, and more.“Deschooling the artifacts of education“requires making the artifacts available.

From my experience, while most anti-authoritarian kids disliked their schoolingand couldn't wait to exit from it, they wouldbe enthusiastic learners in Illich's deschoolededucational model.

Bruce E. Levine, a practicing clinicalpsychologist, writes and speaks about howsociety, culture, politics and psychologyintersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up:Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated,and Battling the Corporate Elite. His Web siteis www.brucelevine.net

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March in support of the 2012 Quebec student strike. Banner reads, “When injustice is the law; resistance is our duty“

RED SQUARESBY MARIA FORT! AND BECCA YU

he 2012 Québec student generalstrike lasted for six months, betweenFebruary and September. Participationpeaked at around 300,000 out of

420,000 university and CEGEP Uunior colleges)students in the province. During the high points,demonstrations took to the streets multipletimes daily with growing militancy met withrampant police violence, especially duringmarches taking place after dark.

The symbol of the strike was a red square.People supporting the strike pinned small redsquares to their clothes and hung large oneson their balconies and spray painted them onsidewalks and buildings.

Govemment legislation attempting to end thestrike only increased street presence. Thoughthe strike has ended, 500 people face criminalcharges and thousands more were issuedtickets, most often for illegal assembly.

In March 2011, when a tuition hike wasannounced in the goveming Québec LiberalParty's budget, the push for a strike started.Opposition began almost immediately as

BLACK FLAGS AND CASSEROLESstudents occupied university administrations’offices; the following November tens ofthousands went on strike for a day and manytook to the streets.

In February 2012, an unlimited general strikecommenced. Strike votes began during the firstweek with 20,000 students voting to strike. Formonths there were demonstrations, blockades,and three occupations as well as constant strike-related activity, including mobilisation for morestrike votes, blocking and disrupting classes,semi-nude marches, creative projects such asart, banner-making, and knitting, and strikesleepovers.

The first serious injury occurred during thefirst month of the strike. On March 7, studentsoccupied an office while supporters faced riotpolice outside the building. The cops used threesound grenades, the first time during the strike,and injruies resulting from one of them caused ademonstrator to lose sight in one eye.

Demonstrations were largely spontaneouswith no pre-determined route or organizer,and this set the tone throughout the strike.Mobilization was so strong that demonstrationscould be called as little as an hour ahead of

time and hundreds ofpeople would show up.This meant there was little to no ownership ofdemonstrations and no established leaders inthe streets.

By March 22, 316,000 out of 420,000 studentsin Québec were on strike (some just for the day).250,000 students and non-students took to thestreets of downtown Montreal to mark the firstmonth anniversary of the strike in what wouldbecome a strike tradition, as from March onwards,the 22nd of each month was marked by giantdemonstrations. It became obvious that a lot ofpeopleweren'tin the streetsjustbecauseofstudentrelated issues, as their barmers and signs carriedmessages about many different social issues.

Taking place during the day, often with a large,visible anarchist presence, these demos oftenhad a festive atmosphere, moving slowly andcreating a space where parents, children, non-status people, and others needing to avoid policeviolence could feel relatively safe as these weresome of the few times during the strike wherepolice intervention was minimal.

Based on how past strikes had gone, in Marchmany people expected the govemment and thestudent associations to start making progress »

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in negotiations. With this in mind, the CLASSE,an anarchist-influenced student federation,called for a week of economic disruptions, withtargeted demonstrations up to five times eachday. Most actions were organized anonymouslyor through student associations. The CLASSEitself did little of the organizing and servedmostly to centralize information on theirwebsite.

Militancy rose among demonstrators andpressure on the govemment increased througheconomic blockades. Targets for blockadesincluded bridges, the Banque Nationaleheadquarters, highways, the province-run liquorretailer, and office buildings. The fancy HotelQueen Elizabeth and the Education Minister'soffice were trashed.

By the end ofMarch, demonstrations weretaking to the streets daily. Masks, to protectparticipants from profiling and chemical irritants,and Maalox mixedwith water to wash out eyesafter being pepper-sprayed, became normalizednecessities. Itwas during this time that the strikeand those participating seemed to increasingly wor.krn.g r ._ Qn=.th.Ebe wagingwar on capitalism and the govemmentrather than just the tuition hike. starts

Consecutive nightly demonstrations startedin nrid-April when the CLASSE was kicked out ofthe first rormd ofgovemment negotiations; theother student unions walked out in solidarity.These night demonstrations continued untilnrid-August, often roaming around downtownMontréal with militant blocs smashing bankwindows and confronting the police.

Three key days arormd this time were the dozensdemonstrations against the Plan Nord jobrecruitment event irr April, May Day, and theruling Liberal Party meeting in Victoriaville. »

The Plan Nord, the $80 billion Québec (§i;§::.1S§;g,{_-11-<govemment plan to further colonize northem pooQuébec and allow companies to devastate it T7?'..,§j¢‘f,"jif?_ "I-T ,- z 11:. ' F} _!*;-jiij ._1ig-i=;;i§.;j;%§§§i}..g:;__:i.;;;,_,;§.;-;_§‘».1;;for resources, has met considerable opposition 'f:_'__ _-1, __ ‘ _, "H_._“".;;jls.:j';;;j{-i' 'from mdigenous people hwngm that reg1<>n- "me 8demonstration was notable for being the first In _

S is E 9 ~ is r S I ho:

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time people had seen Montreal cops run from ..;_i . ;;,. 1-.protesters under a hail of rocks and bottles, and _ 3;one of the first times that it became obvious that _g_ro.u'p__ . ; y Q t ._a lot ofpeople weren't in the streets just because Y,._-___'_i_ff3 Q; ha’.-of student related issues. »-.7" --.:':i J: 1. i S I ' " i " - ' I this

The streets were filled with black and green I g;flags and one of the many demonstrations 1*-I1 'called for this day had been organized by “small groupsan illdisenous Solidarilv smut) that was not 3975:... 1 ii. I,; taffiliated with any of the student associations. ;, -;;;.;.;_,1.=_f,.§._-ti;This demonstration was also the first time the 'r'f'e_7 l fj} ;?-'§ff-- ‘f1 . .-as-iI':’ii i-jif; '.j§;1§_-.f,police of Montréal handed over the reigns to the ;- 11*

See Qutarc. Page :2

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UéC line to the police in advance. It also imposedheavy fines on student associations who

, advocated striking and banned demonstrationsFrom page 31 within a certain distance of a university campus.

Finally, the law ended the semester forprovincial police who arrested 90 protestors. strildng students and set the date for a retum to

This trend continued in Victoriaville, a class for a shortened term in August. Studentssmall town an hour outside ofMontréal, as the were essentially locked out of their classesQuébec provincial police fought to maintain and the struggle moved from the universitysome semblance oforder during a meeting of campuses to the neighbourhoods ofMontréalthe Liberal Party and its supporters by spraying and surrounding areas. Immediate responsesmass amounts of teargas and shooting rubber to this law also included three days ofmilitantbullets indiscriminately. Injuries from this demonstrations involving molotov cocktails,demonstration included the second serious eye widespread use ofmasks (The Montréal cityinjury of the strike, as well as someone suffering council had just passed an anti-mask law), anda coma after being hit in the head by a rubber demonstrators bravely rushing police lines tobullet. break open kettles (when the police encircle a

Squeezed in the middle of these two actions group ofprotesters in preparation for a masswas Montréal's annual anti-capitalist May arrest).Day demonstration. Two May Day marchesoccur annually in Montreal, one organized bythe muons and the other by an anti-capitalistcoalition. Unlike at Plan Nord and The BattleofVicto, as Victoriaville came to be known, theanti-capitalist May Day demo ended early in theevening because of innovative police tactics thatwere unlike anything else seen during the strikedespite the presence ofthe one ofthe biggest 'Black Blocs until this demo. l

People, however, were not just fighting thecops in the streets. Pickers and class disruptions ‘continued on all the universities and CEGEPs -where the strike was still in effect. In response, Ithe provincial courts started issuing injunctions ‘at the request of anti-strike-students. Atleast 38 were issued, making it illegal fordemonstrators to stop students from attendingclass. In practice, it meant that riot police began Whole neighbhorhood participated inbreaking up picket lines outside of schools, demonstrations and assemblies, not justoften spraying chemical irritants and causing students. People wore red scarfs to show theiradministrators to close down the schools solidarity. photo: Norman Nawrockianyways.

Negotiations between student federation Within a week daily spontaneousspokespersons and the-govemment started up neighbourhood demonstrations began. Calledand broke dovm twice as the atmosphere in casseroles, these demonstrations were athe streets became more and more militant. practice borrowed from Latin America whereThe connections between what was happening participants bang on pots and pans in thein the streets and what was happening at the streets. They were followed by autonomousnegotiating table are complicated, but suffice neighbourhood assemblies to support theto say that riots in the streets sometimes lead to strike, where non-students stepped up theirthe govemment being more willing to negotiate involvement in the struggle, creating legaland when negotiations stalled or stopped, the support committees and calling for a generalatmosphere in the streets changed accordingly. strike.

In May, the Liberal Party provincial In early August, Québec Premier Jeangovemment passed what became known as Charest called an election for the beginning ofSpecial Law 78, which, among other things, September, many people realized that the strikemade gatherings ofmore than 50 people illegal was coming up against its biggest challengeunless the participants gave their route and time yet. After months ofdirect democracy and

l _

autonomous organizing, students would have todecide whether or not they trusted govemmentenough to surrender their power in the streetsand face the polls instead. When the shortenedsemester began on August 13, many weregearing up for a return to the streets, but asthe first few students retumed to their generalassemblies, the votes started coming backnegative. Students were retuming to class.

The election took place on September 4.The Parti Québecois (PQ) won a minoritygovemment and Charest lost his seat in theprovincial parliament and subsequently his -position as head of the Liberal Party. PaulineMarois, the new premier of Québec, canceledthe tuition hike, pending a summit on universityeducation. She also repealed the part of Law78 that dealt with demonstrations, though itis unclear if this includes the restrictions onorganizing strikes on university campuses.

The strike died for a few key reasons. One wasbum-out. The non-stop strike activity took itstoll and many found themselves emotionallyand physically needing a break Police brutalityand the courts also played their part. Next,the suspension of the semester due to Law 78resulted in a lock-out during the summer, whichmeant a critical loss ofmomentum. Then, theelection came along, and many people decidedto put their in trust in govemment, campaignagainst the Liberal Party and retum to class.

Clearly, as anarchists, we drink the struggleis far from over. The PQ only repealed Law78 and the tuition hike in an act ofpoliticalopportunism, and will have its ovm brandof austerity measures and anti-immigrantlegislation. Alrrests from the strike total in thethousands. Trials will stretch on for years.

Some are still under severe restrictions,including three people who were exiled fromMontréal, and many others who face curfews,non-association, and other conditions. We'vehad a taste ofwhat it's like to be in the streetsevery day, what it feels like when cops tum andrim from us, what we can accomplish with ourfriends and strangers alike.

We can't erase the downfalls of the strike;namely, the lack of anti-colonial, anti-racistsentiment outside a dedicated minority, thereliance on democratic structures, and theinherent refomrism of a strike against a tuitionhike even when accompanied by the demand toend the commodification of education.

Things can never retum to normal, evenas classes started again. For many ofus, thestruggle began before the 2012 strike and itcontinues in its wake.

This was never just about free education.

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unscnoorwo AND FREE SCHOOLSSo education can beginBY MARIKE REID-GAUDET

'm interested in unschooling because it's anapplied philosophy rather than a teachingmethod. This philosophy, which I strive to usedailywith my son, who is now 16 years old, isalso the one used in free schools. For me, this

approach to life and to children's’ developmentencourages independence, confidence, andpleasure in living. Experiencing unschoolingwithmy son has pemritted us to go beyond the simpleaccumulation ofknowledge.

A.S. Neil comes to mindwhen discussingfreeschools. A radical educator, psychoanalyst,and friend ofWlhehn Reich, he foundedSrmrmerhill school in Suffolk, England in 1921which continues operating to this day. Thefounding principles ofthis free school werefreedom and selfmanagement, with the child‘being the master oftheir learning.

Neil believed that children only learn thingswhen theywant to leam them. He also thoughtthat traditional education forms created easily

Following his experience as a researcher andteacher, Holtwrote How Children Fail in 1964,emphasizing that children live in fear in school,afraid ofgiving the wrong answer, afraid ofnotbeing good enough. Besides fear, lack ofinterest insubjects imposed on children explained the leveloffailures at many schools.

In 1967, inHow Children Leam, Holtmanipulated and docile individuals who conform demonstrated howchildren's’ natural leamingto the needs ofconsumer society. The freedom atSurnmerhill is the rejection ofthe expert, ofthe

process is short-circuited byschools. Believingthatschools couldn'tbe refonned (he equated them

teacherwho possesses all knowledge. with prisons), Holt sought a true altemative to theIvan Illich, the remarkable critic of industrial

society and author, was also interested in thelink between school and society. In 1961,he established the Centro Intercultural de magazine Growing WithoutSchooling whose articles

focused onhowto go from schooling to tmschooling.Documentacion Cuemavaca, Mexico. Hlichconsidered descolarization necessary for freeingpeople from the consumerist ideology taught inschools in advanced capitalist societies, and he

educational institution, and spent the rest ofhis lifetrying to imagine and create ways ofchangingtheeducational paradigm. In 1977, he launched the

The tenn unschooling defines howfamilies liveand leam outside ofschools and their compulsoryand institutional cuniculums. Holt did not exclude

postulated the idea that one should try to imagine the possibilitythat turschoolers use cuniculurnsthe separation ofschool and the state.

His Cuemavaca workshop, until he closed it inor followcourseswith a traditional approach toteaching. But the detemriningfactor is that the child

1976, was an incubator where many revolutionary chooseswhat, when, why and howtheywant toeducators, including Paul Goodman (anarchistwriter and poet, author ofGrowing UpAbsurd,Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and author,Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed and Jolm Holt,(American proponent ofhome schooling whocoined the neologism, "unschooling)," discussedhow to change society

Holt was a fervent promoter ofeducationalreforms. After teaching in Colorado for severalyears in the 1950s, he moved to Boston toparticipate in a study about how children learn.For a year he didn't teach, but only observedclasses to see children in learning situations.

leam; the child is responsible for and controls theirlearning.

This approach postulates that learning, likemotiv-ation, is intrinsic in each individual; thatlearning begins and ends with oneselfand shouldnot be subjected to a predetemrined corpus ofknowledge that responds to a demand made bythe society. The role ofparents is to encouragechildren's’ cruiosity, to assist them in their projectsand experiments.

The tenn unschooling, according to Holt, couldalso be known as self-directed learning, centeredon the child's interests, or as natural or organic

learning, and later became associated with a typeofeducation at home that doesn't use a fixed andstandard curriculum. He defined unschooling asaccording children the maximum freedom in thecontext of learning, within the limits ofwhere theirparents are comfortable.

For Holt, it meant living and learning together,following interests and questions as they appear,learning the way we do before we go to school andthe waywe do after leaving it—follovving intereststhat lead children and adults to read texts, takeclasses, and initiate projects.

The significant difference is that activities arefreely chosen and realized by the learner. They arenot dictated nor imposed through a curriculumthat detemrines at which specific moment andat which specific place leanring must take place,even though parents will certainly influence andguide their children.

Learning how to read or to resolve complicatedmath equations is not natural, but rmschooledchildren decide to learn this type ofmaterialwhen it makes sense for them, and not at apredetermined age. School is based on thememorization ofwhat teacher and the statemandate must be leamed.

Our educational system is fonnatted on theindustry model, with the bell, the desks in a row,and children separated by age. Bom with thebeginning ofthe industrialization, this modelexists for producing the factoryworkers andconsumers ofcapitalist system. Because the freeschool believes in the child as a natural learnerwho should be in charge oftheir own education,they and unschooling philosophy are a way to

See FREE, page 42

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NEW ORVLEANS FdREEWSCH(ll0lhNETW0RKBY KATE SMASH AND ESTHER MARTIN

“In the New Orleans Free School Network,people are there because they want to be. Thereare no grades, people are free to participate, butthey don't have to."

This is how John Clark, Loyola Universityprofessor, activist, and a network foundingorganizer, understands the difference betweentraditional education and the alternative he andothers established in 2010.

When we visited his house earlier this year,Clark greeted us warnrly and showed us into hisdining room. What we saw filled us with joy andsurprise: a packed room full of about twentyyoung people eager to learn about anarchisttheory. No one paid to be there, no one wasbeing paid to be there; they were simply thereto learn.

It was this moment that the endless potentialof the Free School struck. A dining room canbe a classroom; anywhere can be a classroom,a space free ofbureaucratic and monetaryconstraints, where the only exchange is that ofideas and perhaps a bowl of red beans and rice.

The New Orleans Free School Network(NOFSN) was born from this kind of anti-authoritarian enthusiasm for education.

In December 2010, a group of activistsfrom all over the country gathered to createthe network sharing a passion for socialjustice, alternative economies, and most ofall, the development of accessible, relevant,community-based education. We were allinspired by the rapidly spreading Free School(or Skool) movement, with different networksand groups popping up all over world.

Anarchist PoliticsFrank Boomer, a NOFSN founding member,

says he was inspired by the activities of FreeSchools in Washington DC and Baltimore.“I saw people doing radical GED classes forpeople with language barriers, and I thoughtthat would be really cool in New Orleans."

In the beginning, the organizers all sharedthe anarchist politics of many other Free Schoolprojects, believing that traditional educationwas hierarchal, oppressive, and stifled thepotential of the mind and spirit.

We were moved by the theory and practice

Registration at the New Orleans Free School.

of Paulo Freire and other radical educatorswho encouraged us to deconstruct the powerimbalance in education, to challenge thepatriarchal notion that students are simply emptyheads to be filled and teachers are ultimateauthorities. We were all tired ofknowledge beingheld hostage in a cage of institutional authorityand knew there had to be another way.

Knowledge is meant to be exchanged, nottransacted.

These are politics we still uphold now, almosttwo years later. “We are all students, we are allteachers? the slogan we have held dear from thebegirming, concisely expresses these politics. It isa simple slogan, but is in no way a simple idea.

Everyone knows how to do something,whether cooking, dancing, or writing, but noteveryone believes they can teach these skills.Fruther, many people are hesitant to accept thatthese things they are do are in fact skills.

We seek to dispel the notion that one mustbe an expert in order to share and broaden

the narrow scope ofwhat counts as legitimateknowledge. There is no reason why a physicsclass should take priority over a cookingclass. These hierarchies silence the voices ofthose who have valuable things to share withtheir communities. The network provides aninfrastructure to amplify these voices.

Blurring the LineBy blurring the line between teacher and

student, people start to realize their knowledgeis valid and important, that they don't need auniversity degree to share their skills.

Many teachers have expressed that they'veleamed a great deal from their students, orperhaps gained a new perspective on their skill.

Brett Guadagnirro, a long time NOFSN teacher,says he values this kind of input in his World inKnots class. “There's always multiple ways totie knots, some are faster, whether left or righthanded. I found many times with more basicknots, people knew how to tie them different

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l P ways.Learning how to teach something in

different ways gives you a more complex wayofunderstanding." This radical outlook onteaching keeps classes dynamic and accessibleto everyone.

The original organizers gained inspirationnot only from their own radical ideas andresearch, but also from the long and prolifichistory of Free Schools around the world. Manypeople have come in and out of the network,but every single one entered the project withsome previous knowledge ofother Free Schools.From Califomia to Toronto, radical education isspreading rapidly, like weeds breaking throughconcrete.

Free Schools all over the world may havecommon roots, but grow and genninatein various ways. NOFSN's decision to add“Network” to our name was an effort to beconsistent with our mission to provide freeeducation for all. We rmderstood the limits ofour budding organization, but knew how tomaximize our potential and resources.

Young Radical TransplantsNew Orleans is an incredibly diverse,

yet insular citywhere neighborhoods andcommunities stay close. We knew it wouldbe impossible for a group ofyoung radicaltransplants, some ofus new arrivals to NewOrleans, to reach the entire city with our classes.We decided that our network should stretchbeyond our own web of classes, but also otherfree community classes around New Orleans.Our online calendar is not limited to the classesproposed though our structure, but full of freeclasses and opportunities all over the city, alldiverse both in subject and location.

Recently, we have added a kids and teenssection to our calendar to highlight free classesfor young people. We recognize the dire need forchildren and teens to have frm and educationalopportunities outside of their official schools.A high crime rate paired with a low graduationrate of 49.7 percent makes it obvious thatgetting New Orleans kids into positive leamingenvironments is crucial to their health andsafely.

Several schools in New Orleans have

;-:;:-:-:-:-:;:-:-:-:-:;:;:;:-:-:-:-:-:-:-g;-:-:-:;:;;-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:;:-:;:-:-:;:;:;:-:-:-:;t-:-:-:-:»;;:-: :;:-:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;

“While we recognize we are inno position to replace traditionalschooling, we seek to be a liberatingsupplement; a breath of fresh air."eliminated recess, for either lack ofbudget or toaccommodate a packed curriculum, so studentssit all day in sterile buildings with few outletsfor creative stimulation. The NOFSN recognizesthat children need physical and creativeexercise in order to leam and grow.

To help address this, we developed “FieldDays" as an outdoor educational activity day forall ages. These events take place in parks andpublic spaces and include food, games, sports,and skill building activities. This decentralized,autonomous space is a safe and fun wayfor children to get exercise and educationalattention outside oftheir school institution.

While we recognize we are in no positionto replace traditional schooling, we seek tobe a liberating supplement; a breath of freshair. While NOFSN does not yet offer our ownkids classes, we strongly support other youtheducators and are hoping to start kid's classesand workshops in the near future.

One difficulty preventing us from havingchildren's classes is a lack of a schoolhouse.Not having a consistent funding source hasprevented us from creating our own space,though there are many plans to address thiscurrently being discussed.

DIY NatureWhile having a buildingvvould be a wonderful

resource, we also embrace flre decentralized,DIY nature of our activities and classes. Ourclasses take place in community centers, diningrooms, backyards, and outdoors. We enjoyhaing a visible and viral presence.

The motivation and energy surroundingour activity is contagious. Since its energetic

origin, our project has grown and evolvedconsiderably. We have seven dedicatedorganizers and countless supporters, and havesupported more than 60 classes, many of themongoing and facilitated by a changing andcollaborative group of teachers.

They include everything from foodfermentation to carpentry, to Russian,American Sign Language, human sexuality, andphilosophy. The course structures vary frommore traditional models such as discussionsessions and presentations to the hands onpractice of skills.

The classes have grown into their owncommunities. Lena, our dedicated knittingteacher, says, “People in my class are calling me,asking me knitting questions! I can't stop doingit because they would all be disappointed."

Our harm reduction class and humansexuality worldng group are providinginvaluable resources and support to ourcommunity. The Introduction to TimeBanking course is creating an altemative tohe capitalist economy, while Ladies Night hasbeen smashing the patriarchy even before theybecame an NOFSN class!

NOFSN has become a self-sustaining entity.Organizers and teachers can come and go,but flre networkwill continue to thrive. Thedecentralized nature of our organization lends tothe network having a life of its own; we are simplythere to take care of it.

See the network's web sitenolafreeschoolnetwork.blogspot.com forclass schedules and becoming involved.

FIFTH ESTATE

yhtjco; RlEAhLlTlES 0F_’TOURISMROBERT JOE STOUT

“Leave us your money and go home" isn'tpublished in Mexico's tourist propaganda, butis the underlying theme behind promotingmaquilado Mexico (“Mexico cosmeticized").

The govemment “of, by and forentrepreneurs" spends billions to present afairyland ofbikini-clad young women strollingimmaculately white beaches, smiling indigenashappily weaving straw omaments, golf coursesand five-star hotels transforming pre-Colonialexcavations and Las Vegas-type performancessimulating "authentic" folk festivals.

In this fabricated fairyland the realities ofmahrutrition, unemployment, war on drugs-related crime and political repression don'texist.

“The more money you have the morewelcome you are" is extended not only to touristsbut to investors and potential investors. Tourismas part of neoliberal marketing economy is aproduct like sugar, like steel, to be sold for thehighest possible profit. Drug cartel dominationof the countryside, shantytown slums, oil-crusted beaches mitigate profits; consequently,they have to be camouflaged and an altemativedevised, an Oz splayed across curtains thatprevent viewing what exists behind them.

Tourists in Mexico are much like late-nightrevelers in a dancehall or hotel lounge. Thatsome of the locals are wearing heavy makeup orattired in contrived pseudo-opulence doesn'tmatter if they're entertaining to talk to, dancewith, even spend the night with.

“A week's vacation, I came to relax, to enjoymyself. I can't change the world. I don't want totry," a visiting Califomia mathematics professortoldme. Enjoywhathe could andnotlookbeyond.

“Enjoy what you can" extends beyondtourism. It's the offering extended to thecountry's one-hundred and fifteen millioninhabitants, the vast majority ofwhom watchtelevision and listen to the radio.

Outgoing president Felipe Calderon'sadministration spent over twenty billion 500million pesos—nearly one billion 700 milliondollars—on publicity during his 2006-2012presidential term “most of it misleading andmuch of entirely false," according to editorialsin the Mexican newspaper El Universal. Those

As happens frequently in Mexico, police responded to a 2006 protest in the city of. Oaxaca byindiscriminately beating demonstrators and bystanders.

figures don't include the billions poured outfor the ornamental Estela de Luz monumentin Mexico City, lavish centennial celebrationswhich only invited dignitaries were permitted .to attend and alterations to historical sites,including the pyramids ofTeotihuacan and theBasilica de Guadalupe.

The creators of Fantasyland Mexicounderstand that a population strugglingeconomically to survive, men and womenworking two or three jobs, clinging to a fewpossessions, lacking both time and mobility,is relatively easy to control. The struggle toearn a living, to survive, creates intellectualpassivity. Alcoholism increases, curiosity

circumstances, this Fantasyland-mirror,television, tells them that they are exceptions,that they are not in sync with the norm. Notonly does it control—transform—individualand family life it supplants many aspects ofcommunal life. Becomes a nationally sharedpseudo reality.

That this pseudo-reality is trimmed in U.S.colors makes touristed places more comfortablefor visitors. In them one can buy U.S. products,watch cable television, communicate throughintemet. Golf tours, nightclub tours, culinarytours proliferate. (No slum barrio tours orindigena village tours; slum barrios andpoverty-wracked indigena villages don't exist in

diminishes. Television replaces community—or Fantasyland.) In many locations it's difficult ifbecomes community, a common denominator,a cultural unifier. One-hundred and fifteenmillion people, from Tijuana on the U.S. borderto Cancun on the Caribbean, see the sametelenovelas, hear the same news analyses.

Although viewers perceive that in their ownnon-fairyland lives they confront very different,often degrading if not actually dangerous

not impossible to find Mexican-made goods orMexican-grown fruit or vegetables.

Even the drug corporations cooperate withthe pretty picture painted for tourists. The fewU.S. casualties among the more than 90,000victims of so-called War on Drugs have been

See MEXICO, pagel

FIFTH ESTATE1’

I

it

Q55Hill.".'.§.'.Ilill.E.l.§. .ll'.'§!PBY RON SAKOLSKY

Two years before the OccupyWall Street(OWS) movement came into being in September2011, the notion ofoccupying physical space asan oppositional tactic was already in the air.

It had previously surfaced within the nexusof the sprawling California state educationalcomplex in the Fall of 2009, and then thefollowing year during the December 2010uprising ofUK students; in both cases amidsta backdrop ofsevere educational cutbacks andthe governmental austerity measures ofdisastercapitalism.

And, like the subsequent “social strike"kicked offby Québec student unrest in 2012,previous insurgent student actions in Californiaand London were about far more than simplythe economy.

Indeed, even one ofthe most potent andwidely known slogans of OWS, “Occupy December 10, 2010. The Rolls-Royce carrying England's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla droveEverything/Demand Nothing," had its origins through a group of protestors. Students shouted “off with their heads" Er smashed a window.in the militant acts and declarations of the 2009California-based occupy movement. In turn,the Califomia actions had in part been inspiredby the occupation ofthe student center at theNew School for Social Research in New Yorkearlier thatyear. The more militant occupiersamong the New School students had refusedto settle for the refonnist goal ofousting theuniversity president, but had opted instead forthe liberatory potential of creating a momentaryopening in capitalist time and space free ofdemands for administrative concessions.

In After The Fall's “Occupation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide" the rationale for, andimmediacy of, such a “no demands" strategy isexplained in the exuberance of the Californiacontext:

“We must reject all options on offer anddemonstrate that without negotiations it isstill possible to act. This is whywe do not makedemands. All demands assume the existenceofa power capable of conceding them. Whygo through the motions ofnegotiation whenwe knowwe will not win anything but paltryconcessions. There is no power to which wecan appeal except that which we have found inone another. This is why we reject the logic ofrepresentation. No representative, no matterhow charismatic, can achieve anything ofconsequence, except to deprive us of our own

After the Fall: Communiquésfrom Occupied CaliforniaBy Aragorn!Edited by Little Black Cart Books,Berkeley, 2010. This free newsprintpublication is presently out ofprint, but can be downloaded.atafterthefallcommuniquesinfo.

One of the key essays, “We Are TheCrisis," appears in Occupy Everything:Anarchistsin the Occupy Movement, 2009-:2011 by Aragornl, Little Black Cart Books,Berkeley, 2012. 258PP- S15

A User's Guide To Demandingthe ImpossibleBy Gavin Grindon and John JordanMinor Compositions/Autonomedia,London/Brooklyn, 2010, 64pp., $8.

agency. Having representatives reduces us,once again, to passive onlookers upon our ownactivity. We have to take matters into our ownhands."

For an incredible moment, on the Californiacampuses ofUC Santa Cruz, UCLA, UC

Berkeley, UC Davis, San Francisco Stateand CSU Fresno, the watchwords: “Strike/Occupy/Takeover," burned almost as brightlyas the flames of the previous year's Greekinsurrection. The scope of these Californiauprisings illuminated a flickering movement ofinsurrectional “communes” that were not seenmerely as alternative spaces, but as nomadicwar machines to be deployed in the ultimatedestruction ofcapitalist society in accord withthe anarchist and anti-state communist ideas ofthose who struck the match.

In this insurrectionary context, the“Communiqué From An Absent Future: On theTerminus ofStudent Life," signed by Researchand Destroy, can be appreciated as a poeticexpression of this occupation strategy. In theirwords:

“We demand not a free university but afree society; A free university in the midst ofa capitalist society is like a reading room in aprison; it serves only as a distraction from themisery ofdaily life. Instead we seek to channelthe anger ofthe dispossessed students andworkers into a declaration ofwar. . . We mustconstantly expose the incoherence of thedemands for democratization and transparency.

See CITADELS, page 38

FIFTH ESTATI

CitidalsFrom page 37

What good is it to have the right to see howintolerable things are, or to elect those who willscrew us over? We must leave behind the cultureofstudent activism, with its moralistic mantrasofnon-violence and its fixation on single-issuecauses. All ofour actions must push us towardscommunization; that is, the reorganization ofsociety according to a logic of free giving andreceiving."

This impassioned outcrywas marked bythe refusal of “social death," the negation ofthe illusion of “social peace," a strident call for“social rupture," and an affinitywith the dualstrategy of “civil war" and “communization"promulgated by the Invisible Committee intheir widely circulated book, The ComingInsurrection.

In this expansive sense, occupying abuilding is only a first step in overthrowingthe system ofsocial relations and structuresupon which the capitalist state is built. Beyondvehement opposition to the specifics of costlynew university capital projects undertakenat the expense of student learning needs, theuniversity's role as an already barricadeddomain of class reproduction was challenged asa larger “anti-capital" project.

Not onlywere the coffers of the universitybankrupt, but the whole idea of the universityas a bastion ofupward mobility and economicsecurity had been replaced by the likelihoodof a precarious economic future. Moreover, nolonger could universities be conceived of aslively arenas of intellectual pursuit.

Rather, they had become professionalized,careerist, and corporate to the bone. Insteadof inspiring free thinking, they had mainlybecome a machine for manufacturingcompliant producers and consumers; offeringmost students only a one-way ticket on thedown-bound train ofdebt slavery. Faced withthe desolate prospects ofuniversity life and thedoldrums ofeveryday reality, the occupationmovement struck back, loudly proclaiming: “WeAre the Crisis!"

Unlike the Berkeley student organizers of theSixties, who fought under the banner of “SaveThe University," these more contemporaryBerkeley student radicals in the occupymovement equated the inadequacy ofsuch aslogan with a call to “Save The Prisons."

In fact, UC Berkeley students even uncovered

a university contract with San Quentin to useprison labor for supplying the school withclassroom furniture. In rejecting Mario Savio'sfamous call for protesting Berkeley studentsin the Sixties to put their bodies on the “gears,

1

maneuver may not be necessary since the actofdemanding the impossible is by definitionqualitatively different from acting as ifsuchdemands can ever be satisfied within the rubricof “politics as the art of the possible" or enacted

“The task of radical artists in this regard is to createsuch art in order to dismantle and reinvent daily lifeso as to ‘step into the cracks where another world iscoming into view."'

wheels and levers" of the university apparatusto make it come to a grinding halt so thatmeaningful negotiations could take place; oneof the Berkeley occupiers quoted in “VoicesFrom_Wheeler Hall," a zine which is excerpted inAfter The Fall, explains:

“I disagree; we must dismantle the machine,from top down, so that it never starts again. Wewill use what we need and take whatwe need.We will occupy, we will appropriate and, in turn,we will liberate."

Insurrectionary-minded occupierscontended that the idea ofan occupation is toattract energy to the resistance, not to negotiatea settlement. As a student communiqué fromoccupied Kerr Hall eloquently proclaimed, “Anoccupation is a vortex, not a protest."

In order to avoid cooptation, the WheelerHall students insisted that whatwas neededwas “a displacement, not a fusion." Occupierswere urged to eschew liberalism by a sloganlifted from the Invisible Committee's pamphlet,The Call, and written on all the Wheeler Hallchalkboards: “Live communism, spreadanarchy."

Rather than being entrapped in the legalitiesofnegotiations: adventure, imagination,spontaneity and unbridled direct actionwere the (mis)rule of the day. Studentgovernance types, well-meaning but cluelessfaculty “observers” and their conventionalstudent activist counterparts, were all caughtunawares by the uncompromising nature andseductive appeal ofsuch a relentless strategy of“impossibility".

Which brings us to the UK student upheavalofNovember/December 2010 and the secondpublication under review here, A User's Guide toDemanding The Impossible.

This book decidedly crosses out the word“demanding” in its title to make a “demandnothing" point. However, such a verbal

within the configuration ofpower known as thecapitalist state or state capitalism.

In essence, then, to demand the impossibleis to inevitably reveal the impoverished natureofwhat are considered to be possible demandswithin the confines ofconsensus reality. Thedesired outcome is not related to the idea thatradical demands can be realized throughthe process ofreform, but that demandingreform within university politics will pale bycomparison to a resistance based upon theunimpeded flight ofour desires.

To meaningfully address the blight ofthecorporate university, we must step outsideof the anemic submission-inducing reach of“reasonable possibility" and into the radicalrealm ofthe impossible where the very existenceofall social institutions is called into question.The point is to act on our desires without thereformist restraint of “reasonability" cloudingthe radical ferocity ofour vision.

On December 9, 2010, the SurrealistLondon Action Group (SLAG) issued its “NewAlexandria" tract in solidaritywith the unrulyUK students. It is a case in point ofdemandingthe impossible. Defending learning whileattacking the university at its core, it reads inpart:

“Those ofus who have worked and studiedon these intellectual factory farms know thateducation in this countryhas been nothingshort ofa disaster. Children fed poetry that'sbeen reduced to the literary equivalent ofTurkeyTvvizzlers; students told that politically flabbypost-New Left bullshit is the way to make senseof ‘culture’; academics chasing ever-decreasingfunding by publishing in elitist journals withever-decreasing readerships. . . Defend thatcrap? Not on your life. Where in all ofthis is thebeautiful savagery of the mind? Learning isno commodity: it's an acid to burn money. It'straced in golden words offire that fall blazingfrom the page, flaring and dying as we read

FIFTH ESTATE

\

P them, gone in an explosion ofunknown suns."Curiously though, while the User's Guide

does not neglect surrealism as one ofthetouchstones ofrevolt, this piercing SLAG tractgoes unmentioned.

While the bulk ofthe book takes an “artactivist" approach to the volatile politicallandscape ofNovember/December 2010, it doesnot fail to place such activism in the twentiethcentury historical context ofart and revolution.

It is a history that understands that the radicalromanticism ofSurrealism was built uponthe radical negation ofDada, embracing andthen moving beyond it in the first halfof thatcentury. As the century continued to unfold,the book moves from the Dutch Provos' whitebicycles and the Digger “free stores" ofSanFrancisco to the Situationist-inspired salvos ofKing Mob in the UK, from the anarchic “gnome”gatherings of the Orange Alternative in Polandto the disruptive anarchist public theatre of theMetropolitan Indians of Italian Autonomia,and onwards from the carnivalesque Reclaimthe Streets dance-parties to the technologicallysavvy hacktivism ofthe Electronic DisturbanceTheatre in the Nineties.

By the early part of the 21st century,widespread UK student unrest boiled over inopposition to proposed educational cutbacks byan austerity-minded government in the face of abanking meltdown that, as many students werequick to point out, was not a crisis that they hadcaused.

Actions, includingvehement protestsand building occupations at a number ofuniversities, were initially ignited by theNovember 10, 2010 trashing of30 Millibank inWestminster, which houses the headquartersof the Conservative Party, involving seriousproperty destruction and clashes with thepolice.

These events were followed by the November24 Whitehall march against fees and cuts whichinvolved a massive student walkout from alleducational institutions and an attemptedprotest march from Trafalgar Square to theHouses ofParliament which the police largelyblocked.

Later, on December 9, the date theaforementioned SLAG tract was circulated,students successfully marched fromBloomsbury to Parliament Square, oppositeParliamentwhere they pushed over the metalbarriers and occupied the central grassy areaof the square. Several thousand demonstratorswere kettled and beatenwith truncheons by thepolice.

Elsewhere in Central London, masked rebels

smashed all of the windows on the groundfloor ofHer Majesty's Treasury. On RegentStreet, protesters attacked a limousine carryingCharles, the Prince ofWales, and Camilla,Duchess ofCornwall, catching the blue-blooded parasites by surprise on their way tothe evening's Royal Variety Performance at theLondon Palladium.

It was in the December whirlwind of theseDays ofAction that the slim backpocket-sizedUser's Guide was written by Gavin Grindon andJohn Jordan. In it, they specifically thank “thecrew ofthe occupied and soon to be occupiedart schools who inspired us to get this out."

Like After The Fall, it grew directly out ofthestruggle, but in the case of the User's Guide, itspecifically showcased the new creative forms of“intervention art" developed by activist-orientedartists. The publication's aim was to introducesuch interventionist practices to a largercommunity making them readily available torebellious students for tactical discussion andpossible inclusion in a direct action repertoireinformed by both conflict and creativity.Accordingly, as was After The Fall, it too wasinitially distributed for free as an anti-copyrightpublication. Though it had its practical side,

globalization provocations of the ClandestineInsurgent Rebel Clown Army, the-Centre ForTactical Magic's Goldmanesque.re-imaginingof ice cream vans as vehicles for direct actiondispensing not only ice cream but radicalliterature and gas masks, summit-hopping bookblocs marching side by side with black blocs,Yo-mango's subversive assaults on consumerculture in Spain, the fabrication ofshields byClimate Camp activists in London which weredesigned with huge haunting photographs ofclimate refugees emblazoned upon them so thatthe TV cameras would catch the police violentlystriking these faces with their batons, and thecorrosively humorous pranks ofthe Yes Meneverywhere.

Here is a book guaranteed to offer food forthought, inspiration and an open invitation tofurther elaboration.

One such example chronicled within theUser's Guide emanates from the producersofthe book project itself, the Laboratory ofinsurrectionary Imagination (Labofii). In2009, theywere invited to hold a workshop onart and activism at the Tate Modern, entitled“Disobedience Makes History," and end with apublic performance intervention.

The User's Guide is not a road map or instructionmanual. It is a match struck in the dark, a home-mademulti-tool to help you carve out your own path throughthe ruins

the book's intended purpose was not purelyfunctional:

“This guide is not a road map or instructionmanual. It is a match struck in the dark, a home-made multi-tool to help you carve outyour ownpath through the ruins of the present warmedby the stories and strategies ofthose who tookBertolt Brecht's words to heart: ‘Art is not amirror held up to reality, but a hammer withwhich to shape it."'

More than just a portable recipe book for artactivism, the User's Guide does not shy awayfrom questioning the pretence of the art worldand seeks to locate a politically-engaged artbeyond mere representation.

The book draws twenty-first centuryexamples from the anarcha-feminist streetart projects ofMujeres Creando in Bolivia,the escrache-based exposes ofGrupo deArte Callejero in Argentina, the zany anti-

However, unlike some practitioners of“intervention art" who are reluctant to directlytake on the art world itself, Labofii did not cringeat biting the hand that feeds them. Once theyhad accepted the Tate's offer, theywere dulyinformed by email that as a strictly enforced ruleno artistic intervention could be made againstthe museum's sponsors, one ofwhich happenedto be British Petroleum.

However, Labofii decided instead to use theemail as material for the workshop. Projecting itonto the wall, they asked workshop participantswhether they should obey the curator's edict,and deciding not to do so, proceeded to set up anart activist collective with the aim ofrevealingthe Tate's golden handshake deal with the oilbarons as a death grip on artistic freedom.

A few months later, the newly establishedcollective poured hundreds of liters ofblack

See CITADELS, page 47

FIFTH ESTATE

M From page 36

Mexican-Arnericans with dual citizenship orpersons connected with government operations(U.S. consulates, the CIA). The drug exporters,like the Televisa/government, don't want to bitethe hand that feeds them: U.S. citizens are thedrug corporations’ principal customers.

Although ostensibly privately ovmed andmanaged, television in Mexico is intricatelyinterwoven with the federal govemment. Thegovemment has been one of its principaladvertisers, promoters and confederatessince television wedged its way into Mexicanhouseholds after World War II.

During the presidential administration ofVicente Fox (2000-2006) the federal govemmentgranted monopoly—“duopoly"—rights toTelevisa and TV Azteca, the country's twonational networks. Collaboration betweenthe duopolers and the government makes itimpossible to distinguish who is regulating who.No one really knows to what extent the federalgovemment controls television or to what extentthe duopoly controls the federal govemment.

For a populace that historically has hada high rate of illiteracy and semi-literacytelevision is a pervasive force. When it isthe only source ofnews and entertainmentit becomes so webbed into daily life that itbecomes a basic part of existence like buses,electricity, beer.

Mexico's tightly controlled televisionprogramming and governmental publicityseldom report anything that doesn't reflectprosperous Mexico filled with happy people.Nor does it detail the govemment's failures tosolve crimes or effectively deal with powerfuldrug organizations.

During President Calderon's six-year term,the television duopoly consistently airedhis boasts about creating jobs, the country'seconomic solvency and its successes againstnarcotics commerce, boasts that exaggeratedand misrepresented the facts.

When anti-govemment marches, takeoversof roll booths, environmentalists chainingthemselves to trees, hunger strikes to regainemployment and blockades of foreign-ownedgold-mining contamination appear in newsreports they are presented as criminal activitiesor the work of dissidents attempting to destroyFantasyland.

The propaganda controlled media glorifiesthe slaying of drug corporation capos asvictories in the war against organized crimedespite evidence that six years of military

intervention has increased, not decreased,drug-connected profits, the numbers ofindividuals participating in the trade and theamormt of territory the so-called cartels control.

“How can people believe this b.s.?" I asked asuburban Mexico City video maker.

“They don't," he replied. “They know it's alie. But the truth has become so mangled it'simpossible to sort through it. So most peopleshrug offwhat govemment politicians say. Theyjust try to get through today and see what theyhave facing them tomorrow."

The greatest danger to this artificial realityis that someone will break through and exposewhat really is happening. One person—evenone small comrnunity—disrupting the fantasycan be thrust aside as deviant, ignorant—evencriminal—but united protest efforts have to berepressed before they become too strong.

Mexican police and military beat, tortured,raped and arrested hundreds at Atenco inthe Estado de Mexico in 2006 and in Oaxacathe same year to prevent anti-administrationdemonstrations from becoming area-wideor nationwide movements. For nearly thirtyyears armed military have surrounded theZapatista communities in Chiapas in southemMexico to “prevent the cancer from spreading,"as one of President Emesto Zedillo's advisorscommented.

A force of over 1,500 state and federal armedmilitary and police violently quashed a studentprotest in Michoacan in October 2012, beatingand arresting hrmdreds in a state wracked bycorruption and drug-related crime. That noequivalent large scale operations had beenlaunched against criminal organizations inthat state demonstrated which the govemingelite considered to be the greater evil: ganglandviolence or organized protests. The gangs—thedrug-exporting corporations—are part of thestatus quo, the protesters are not.

Television and most of the rest of the mediaroutinely report anti-govemment marches,takeovers of toll booths, environmentalistschaining themselves to trees, hunger strikes toregain employment and blockades of foreign-OWl'l€(I gold-mining contamination as criminalactivities. They glorify the slaying of drugcorporation capos as victories in the war againstorganized crime despite evidence that six yearsofmilitary intervention has increased, notdecreased, drug-connected profits, the numbersof individuals participating in the trade and theamormt of territory the so-called cartels control.

That is not to say that the artificial Mexicocreated for tourists and residents isn't fragile.The curtain needs to remain in place, the

actors (politicians, television producers andpersonalities, NAFTA-benefited entrepreneurs,etc.) need to stick to the script. Revelationsabout the emperor's new clothes have tobe repressed or the emperor (those samepoliticians, television personalities andentrepreneurs) incur drastic income reductions.

In much the same way that shuns andpoverty-wracked rural villages remain out ofsight to visiting tourists, dnrg commerce-relatedviolence has remained behind the Wizard'scurtain. The drug corporation capos and theiracolytes have tremendous amounts of cashat their disposal--cash that they invest in so-called legitimate enterprises, including touristfacilities.

Fervent competition to construct larger andmore elaborate marinas, beachfront hotelsand condominiums, Five-Star resorts andextravagant sports facilities straps availablefinancing: Insertions of ready cash are alwayshighly appreciated. Not only the capos butbureaucracies ofunderlings associated withthem purchase million-dollar homes, airplanes,ranches. They number among the expensivetourist resorts most lavish clients.

“The more moneyyou have the morewelcome you are" knits transnationalentrepreneurs, drug exporters, tourists andforeign govemments eager for oil, gold andsilver and lumber with a mythology ofAztecand Mayan heroism, brightly costumed andcarefully choreographed traditional dancers,colonial architecture and resort-strevm tropicalbeaches.

A fairyland ofhappy people and quaintcustoms, impressive history and artisticcreations that is seventeenth century traditionaland luxuriously expensive. It's a show, acostume party, a scripted travelogue: sun,volcanoes, tlayudas, tequila, and photo albums.

“The less moneywe have the less welcomewe are." Those ofus who live behind theWizard's curtain, excluded from Fantasyland,numbed by television, cannot eat words, cannotclothe ourselves in propaganda. The wizard is indanger of losing his curtain.

When that happens poverty-ridden Mexicowill again be the real Mexico and the touristswill have to see what's really here or pocket theirmoney and go back home.

Robert Joe Stout freelances from Oaxaca,Mexico. His books include Why ImmigrantsCome to America: Braceros, Indocumentadosand the Migra and Blood of the Serpent:Mexican Lives, two novels and hundreds ofarticles and essays in various publications.

FIFTH ESTATE

Toronto'sFree SchoolIt Takes A CommunityBY MEGAN KINCH

narchist experiments in education inthe Toronto area reflect a history ofbriefspaces carved out from commercialism,offlowerings of liberation followed by

the seeds of the next project to emerge.Experiments in popular education or free

schools have often co-existed with experimentsin collective living, and have also been tied toparticular waves of activism, following radicalBrazilian educator Paulo Freire's theoriesthat libration education only works when tiedto a project ofhtunan liberation in general.Anarchist movements in urban areas, likeToronto and nearby cities, thrive in spaces atonce marginal and central, and freeschools haveemerged along with them.

Some of these projects still live, othershave passed on. Anarchist spaces are oftentemporary, falling slowly to gentrification,eviction or quickly to police repression. If thefree schools have also been temporary, they arealso signposts pointing to the possibility of thefuture.

Kalin Stacey, associated with recentfreeschool projects in Toronto, connected theidea ofphysical space and organizing space:“One of the firings that's really critical for afreeschool is that it's both a decentralized andlearning project, but also a community buildingproject.

The best scenario for an establishedfreeschool that sticks around is to have a radicalcommunity centre/social space, autonomous

space that also is sustainable and can provide ameeting place. That's something the anarchistfree school that happened in the late ‘90s inKensington had that made it really effective.And, when they lost the space, they lost theschool."

A tucked away multi-cultural neighborhoodofToronto, Kensington Market had been homein the 1980s to anarchist-influenced punkswho fought legendary battles with neo-nazis,often organizing by word ofmouth from theirbase in flre market. In the 1990s, the OntarioCoalition Against Poverty fought militant anti-gentrification battles across the city.

Along with this heightened level ofpoliticalstruggle, the anarchist scene also flourishedin Kensington, with anarchists bookstores andspaces such as Who's Emma, Uprising, and theAnarchist Free Space, where the Anarchist FreeSchool met. The school faltered, but was quicldyre-bom as the Anarchist Free University (AFU),one of the Toronto's longest-running anarchistprojects.

Illogik, (half of the anarchist rap group, TestTheir Logik) was involved in the early 2000s,and says, “The AFU was amazing vibrantwhen I first got involved; multiple classes eachsemester, lot of attendance. The AFU led me toUprising [bookstore] and then to a now-defunctcollective house which all spawned manydifferent activities. It got me plugged into thecommunity and once in, the vehicle that got methere was less important."

Maggie, an AFU organizer, noted thatfreeschool theory needed to be adapted toan urban North American context. She says,

figures was a mysterious figure knovm to _everyone as Possum. Science fiction author andblogger, Cory Doctorow described him as the“epitome ofhappy mutanthood."

A founding member of the AFU, Erik“Possum” Stewart also lived in two importantcollective houses associated with the free “U.”He often preferred to help set up the structurefor an open self-regulating system and do thelow level maintenance, often in subtle wayshelping consensus work or nudging thingsalong, keeping spaces like the Anarchist “U”running.

You could have a deep theoreticalconversation about any number of topics withPossum, but never know basic things about himlike what he did for a living. It tumed out he'dattended a altemative high school called SEEDin downtown Toronto, but rejected his diplomain a statement against fonnalized education.Sadly, this summer, Possum was found dead byhis roommates; an autopsy showed that he hada cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep.

New waves of anarchism would arise not outofToronto itselfbut from developing scenesin the smaller cities nearby. In Hamilton, anindustrial city located an hour to the south-west,a new FreeSkool project was taking off. Peter,one of the fotmders, told me: “We borrowed thebroad concept ofFreeSkool, but made up allthe details on our own." The project inventedits own structure, more organized than theAFU, involving a consensus-based collectiveof four committed organizers serving 8-monthoverlapping tenns.

The Hamilton Freeskool also followed Freire's

“A freeschool is a community building project..."“Friere saw peasant and landowners as the cruxofpower, it's defiantly a different thing whenits in a society where there's a more urgentunderstanding ofwhat's wrong which I think issometimes lacking in north America."

The AFU, which at one point shared a housewith Bike Pirates (a radical bike collective),eventually became homeless. Poor and workingclass people in Kensington began to lose theirbattles with gentrification, and high rents meantcollectives had trouble keeping infoshops orpunk venues open. Anarchism went a bit furtherunderground. Without a geographical space ora strong activist movement, the AFU stagnatedalong with the dispersed anarchist scene ingeneral.

Although the AFU was decentralized and abit amorphous, one of the central and persisting

model of education in connecting courses topraxis, such as the “Radical Practical Solidarity"course that did indigenous solidarity workwith the nearby Six Nations of the Grand River,Canada's largest First Nation. Also in linewith his model of teaching skills needed forrevolutionary organizing was an emphasis onpractical skills like language learning.

Niki Thome wrote her masters thesis onthe project, and writes how bum-out from athree-month militant winter strike at Toronto'sYork University in 2008/2009 was transfonnedinto excitement at the community buildingpossibilities at the Hamilton freeschool.

“In contrast to my terrible strike experience,"she writes, “FreeSkool, for me, has always

See TORONTO, page 42

FIFTH ESTATE

TorontoFrom page 41

been this warm welcoming inspiring space, acommrmity ofcaring and creative people, andan example of the concrete beautiful projectsand initiatives that we can build out ofour ideasand ideals. FreeSkool represents creativity andcommunity, and is part ofbuilding the kind ofworld we want to live in."

Toronto anarchists came together with theircomrades from other cities during flre 2010 G20protest there, and brought their slightly differentfreeschool projects with them. An AFU mediacourse created a team which produced a high-quality independent film ofthe mobilization,“Tales from the G20." A freeschool on theHamilton mode, The Toronto Free School,ran for a year or so in the post-G20 period, butfaltered because organizing became increasinglycentered on defending those arrested in theactions and prisoner support.

In 201 1, when Occupy erupted, the continuingpopular outrage at police actions during G20meant that Toronto had a bit more spacefrom state repression than in other cities.The encampment at St. James Park, with itsmany trees and rolling hills, resembled a kindof anachronistic medieval village, but withelectrified committee tents, which were joined bythree beautiful Yurts.

OccupyToronto collectively decided that itshould provide food and tents to all, and becamea self-organized community service as well as aprotest. Unfortunately, the General Assemblies,the decision making bodies for Occupy, wereparticularly non-functional and were associatedwith numerous incidents ofaggression andviolence. hr such an enviromnent, itwas especiallyimportant to create an education project thatwas embedded in the communal living, semi-intentional community thatwas set up by OccupyToronto.

Kalin, who had been part of the post-G20 freeschool, helped set up the infrastructure alongwith a few other experienced organizers, so thatOccupy Freeschool was established in sucha way that once it was up and running it wasmainly self-sustaining. People simply scheduled

classes daily on a whiteboard leaning on the sideof the dedicated tent. Many classes went alongwith organizing projects at Occupy, such as therecruring class on Anarchist Communism thatwas attended by many of the people involvedin community safety in the camp, lending atheoretical basis to the practical work ofkeepingpeople as safe and free as possible.

Non-anarchists also appreciated the openstructure, setting up courses on recycled paperarts, gardening, and even Marxism. Kalin told methe Occupy Free School, “definitely planted someseeds of interest in that type ofeducation project."

The free education framework persisted evenonce the camp was evicted although the Occupycommunity fell apart in exile. Now run by peoplewho learned about fieeschools experientially,the Free'scool now meets in a downtown parkon Sundays, creating a temporary physicalspace and evoking memories of the Occupyencampment.

Roxy, one ofthe new organizers with theOccupy Free'scool says, "We desperately neededucation that is free for the development of theindividual personality. This means educationthat is culturally relevant, and teaches peace andself-determination."

Illogik says, “Occupy built something thatcrashed against the walls of the state and thenreceded;" words that apply in general to anarchistorganizing and educational projects in Toronto.

Organically connected with the anti-authoritarian organizing scenes in the city,liberation education has risen and fallen withthe tide of militancy in the city. Wresting physicaland organization space from capitalism for theprojects we need is a difficult task, but it's onethat has to be done as we move forward.

We can't always fight the system head on.We also have to build the systems that sustainourselves and our struggles as we move out of themargins to really challenge the capitalism andthe state.

Megan Kinch came to anarchism through theHamilton Freeschool, and was involved withthe AFU, the Toronto Free School, and OccupyFreeschool. She is currently involved in“building up people's media organizations andis an editor with the Toronto Media Co-op.

FreeFrom page 33

change the old paradigm.Developing children's critical sense allows

them to develop independent thinking.Comelius Castoriadis, a libertarian socialistwhowas one ofthe founders offlre group, Socialismor Barbarism in 1946 which influencedmany anarchists and Situationists, wrote thatautonomous thinking is, morethan anything,questioning.

According importance to myson's questions(nurnerousl), taking the time to listenwhenthey're asked (even if I have one foot on aladder or am absorbed in mybook), helpingand guiding him in his research, assistinghim in his experiments, and seeinghispleasure in validating, invalidating nuancing,complexifying his solutions and arrswers—thishas given me the privilege ofobservingthebirth and fonnation ofhis critical thinking, hispersonality, his being.

Illich, in Deschooling Society, sawflrefunction ofalienation in schooling, that is beinga prisoner ofthe scholastic ideology, peoplerenounce the responsibility for their owngrowth, and this abdication leads to a kind ofintellectual suicide.

Creating concrete altematives to theindoctrination ofthe official educationalsystem has always been a priority foranarchists. Whether in the area ofreflectionabout education, like Max Stirner andWilliamGodwin, or by experiments by SébastienFaure, Paul Robin, and Francisco Ferrer, theseeloquent examples from the past canyhope forthe future.

And, they stimulate us to roll up our sleevesand act.

Marike Reid-Gaudet has a background inanthropology and the sociology ofeducation.She is currently the president ofAQED(Homeschooling Association ofQuebec) anddreams (and works with others dreamers)about having a free school in Montreal.

See summerhillschooLco.uk

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FIFTH ESTATE

BY PAUL J. COMEAU

For over thirty years William Gibsonhas been the unintended prophet of ourdigital future. The award-winning authorof Neuromancer, Virtual Light, and a stringof other best-selling science fiction novels,Gibson's writings have not only presaged

ijiwittliajmtfiibsion S ins,-New.York S

the future in many ways, but also serve ascritiques on the present in which they werewritten.

Gibson is credited with coining the termcyberspace, and imagining worlds wherethe physical and the digital seamlesslyoverlap. The settings of his novels are oftendystopian in nature, filled with corporateconglomerations controlling all aspectsof society in not so uncertain terms, andinhabited by individuals trying their bestto survive in a world where they are asmuch products as people. One detects notonly echoes of Orwell and Huxley, but alsodisturbing resemblances to our own currentliving conditions, which Gibson says is thepoint of all good science fiction.

With Distrust That Particular Flavor, Gibsonoffers up his first collection of non-fictionwritings, assembled from throughout thecourse of his entire career. These twenty-six essays provide not only a deeper lookinto the writer and his work, but also offersGibson's own unique takes on numeroussubjects. The touchstone to all of Gibson'swritings, fiction and non-fiction, is the ideathat we can't even begin to understandsociety and culture until we understand

technology's role in shaping our culture.In “Rocket Radio," the first and earliest

essay in this collection, published by RollingStone magazine in 1989, Gibson takes upthis theme, writing, “l belong to a generationof Americans who dimly recall the worldprior to television. Many of us, I suspect, feelvaguely ashamed about this, as though theworld before television was not quite, well,the world."

“The world before television," hecontinues, “equates with the worldbefore the Net— the mass culture and themechanisms of Information. And we are ofthe Net; to recall another mode of being is toadmit to having once been something otherthan human.".

When referring to the Net, Gibson's writingpredates the internet as we know it, and isn'tmeant to include simply the transmittingof information via computer, but meant toencompass the totality of communicationstechnology. “Once perfected, communicationtechnologies rarely die out entirely; rather,they shrink to fit particular niches in theglobal info-structure," he writes.

This includes not only television andthe then bourgeoning internet, but eventechnologies highly archaic at the time ofhis writing: crystal radios, mimeograph, andcrank and dial adding machines. Gibsondescribes the freedom as a portable battery-powered turntable available to his teenage-self. “This constituted an entirely new way tolisten to the music of choice," Gibson writes,“'Choice' being the key word.”

In the commentary at the end of the essay,Gibson writes that his take on the idea of theNet was more about “some more abstractexpression of the totality of cyberspace,"than the actual circuits and wires of theInternet, and it is this abstract expression,the putting into words things that feel subtleor otherwise unexpressed, that give all of

Gibson's writings their resonance with thereader.

Much of Gibson's fiction writing is setin a fictional near-future Japan. One ofthe questions Gibson is most asked byjournalists in interviews is why Japan, asopposed to the US, his place of birth, orCanada, his place of residence? Gibsonanswers that question in several essays inthis collection, each time coming back to thetouchstone of the intersections betweentechnology and culture.

Many of us like to think that our cultureshapes technology to suit its needs, butGibson points out in “Modern Boys 8 MobileGirls," that the reality is actually quite theopposite. “Japan is the global imagination‘sdefault setting for the future," Gibson writes.

“The Japanese seem to the rest of us tolive several measurable clicks down thetimeline. The Japanese are the ultimate EarlyAdaptors, and. . .if you believe, as I do, thatall cultural change is essentially technologydriven, you pay attention to the Japanese".

Gibson provides two examples of the rapidembrace of technology by the Japanese, andhow their culture, and the rest of the world'sculture is shaped by it. The first is the earlyadoption of text messaging by Japaneseschool girls, who Gibson dubs “Mobile Girls,"as a primary means of communication.

What's striking is that these Mobile Girlstook what was then a new minor functionof cell phone technology and built a culturearound it. “What is it that the Mobile Girlsare so busily conveying to one another?"Gibson writes. “Probably not much at all:the equivalent of a schoolgirl's note," heanswers.

The second example is the symbol ofwhat launched Japan from the end of itsfeudal period, and straight into the industrialrevolution, and the future. That symbolof technology is the mechanical watch.The watch, the symbol of what came to beknown popularly in contemporary Japaneseas “Modern Boys," the young generationof European-influenced Japanese whoembraced the technological future, andpushed the country to become the firstindustrialized nation in Asia.

Gibson cites the rapid industrialization ofJapan, as the launching point for the Japanof the future. The breakneck pace at whichthe country industrialized set them on thepath to “empire-building expansionist mode,

See DISTRUST, page 44

FIFTH ESTATE

istrFrom page 43

which eventually got them two of their largecities vaporized. . .by an enemy wielding atechnology that might as well have comefrom a distant galaxy."

What followed was an aborted attemptat cultural reengineering. “The result of thisstupendous triple-whammy, (catastrophicindustrialization, the war, the AmericanOccupation)," Gibson writes, “is the Japanthat delights, disturbs, and fascinates ustoday." In the essays “Shiny Balls of Mud,“and “My Own Private Tokyo," Gibson furtherexplores the unique aspects of Japaneseculture, and the interesting ways in whichthat culture permeates into the rest of theworld's culture. In all of these essays, thereis the inkling of the idea of The Future aspresent. While this phenomenon can beeasily observed in Japan, it is happeningeverywhere, and Gibson addresses the topicin other essays in the book.

In his 2010 talk for Book Expo New York,Gibson grapples with the relationshipbetween history and the Future with a capitalF, and the kind of mirror image relationshipbetween them. He laughs off the sciencefiction critics who declare the future is over.“I wouldn't blame anyone for assuming thisis akin to the declaration that history [is] over,and just as silly," Gibson writes.

Instead, what Gibson sets up is the idea thatinstead of living in The Future, as those of hisgeneration envisioned it, “be it the crystallinecity on the hill, or radioactive post nuclearwasteland," he writes, we have reachedwhat he calls a state of “No Future." “Aheadof us, there is merely. . .more stuff. Events.Some tending to the crystalline, some to thewasteland-y."

He goes on to say that what everygeneration thinks of as their capital-f Future,“We discover it, invariably to be the lower-case now.“

This train of thought leads to one of thecentral concepts behind all of Gibson's fiction,and from his perspective, the central conceptbehind all the best science fiction: the ideathat the best science fiction has always been,under various guises, about the present inwhich it was written.

This understanding might seem obviousto anyone who thinks of fiction as a tool forpolitical expression. The best art is alwayscommentary upon the present society of theartist who creates it. Gibson cites On/vell's1984 as an example, and goes on to relatehow his own novels, nine of them andcounting, each related to the era in whichthey were written. His breakout novel, 1984'sNeuromancer, was set in a fictional 2030,and his 1990s trilogy. beginning with 1993'sVirtual Light, was set in 2006. There's more tofiction than just setting and subtext Gibsonnotes.

“A book exists at the intersection of theauthor's subconscious and the reader'sresponse," he writes. “A writer worries awayat a jumble of thoughts, building them intoa device that communicates, but the writerdoesn't know what's been communicateduntil it's possible to see it communicated."Gibson refers to this as part of the “mysteriousbusiness," that is writing fiction, but it's anidea that could be applied to all the arts.

In nearly all of the essays in this book,Gibson touches on autobiographical topics,inserting himself and his own experiencesinto the narratives. I found this gave manyof the pieces an added layer of depth, orprovided a bit of grounding context in whichto understand the points the author tries tomake.

A few purely autobiographical pieces here

provide additional context to Gibson's ownlife. In “Since 1948," Gibson lays out hispersonal life and the development, partlyout of necessity, of his writing life, andhe debunks several myths about himself.“Google me and you can learn that I do it allon a manual typewriter, something that hasn'tbeen true since 1985, but which makes suchan easy hook for a lazy journalist that I expectto be reading it for the rest of my life."

He freely admits to avoiding the internetin its early days, but only until “the adventof the Web turned it into such a magnificentopportunity to waste time that I could nolonger resist." Gibson talks about his internetexplorations in a few pieces, including “TheNet Is A Waste Of Time," a short essay writtenfor the New York Times Magazine in 1996.

For an essay written in the pre-Google orsocial media era, Gibson's words are striking.The essence expressed in the piece is it takesa lot of work to waste time on the net, and thatthe use of the internet what we would normallythink of as a leisure activity akin to watchingtelevision, actually resembles working. I thinkany of us whose work involves spending timeon the internet would agree with Gibson'sassessment, something that has only becometruer in the nearly twenty years since.

Ultimately, what Distrust That ParticularFlavor offers readers is more than just aglimpse into the mind of one of our greatestcontemporary writers and cultural analysts.It presents us with a series of challenges tothe wired world most of us take for granted,and asks us to pause and consider howour culture got to where it is, and in whatdirection it might be heading.

When we consider the bleak glossytechno-worlds of Gibson's fictions, hisreasoned critiques of our own wired realitystrike with even greater force of thought.They're critiques we should all be takingseriously.

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What Would Anarchists Do?

Anarchy 101, edited by Dot Matrix, is a crowd-sourced introduction to anarchist ideas. The content comesfrom the website anarchy101.org which poses and answers ongoing questions it receives. They representthe best responses from dozens of contributors to hundreds of queries about the “Beautiful Idea: thisthing called anarchy," as Ardent Press, the book's publisher, puts it. See ardentpress.com.

t Here's one from the book for Fifth Estate readers to ponder; one we've faced in the past. You can mail inyour answer either postal, email, or social media, and we may print some of them in our next issue. Short answers, please.“Would an anarchist bookstore clerk call the cops if the store was being robbed at gunpoint?"

FIFTH ESTATE

REVIEW:

TIME St REALITYBY PENELOPE ROSEMONT

Leonora Carrington, the great surrealistcreator ofpaintings and stories, is quotedas saying, “The duty of the right eye is toplunge into the telescope, whereas the left eyeinterrogates the microscope.”

Seldom do we find this range of mentalexperience in writing. But here it is in MirandaMellis's None ofThis Is Real—part story,part philosophical treatise—beautifully toldand masterfully achieved. This fine bookcontains multitudes of colorful permutations,ever-changing panoramas, magical chanceencounters, lucid geographies of the mentalexperience that underpins the archeology of ouridentity, our dreams, our everyday life.

The collection begins with the short piece,“Face,” in which the teller transcribes heruncontrollable mutability of expression: “. . .[Flace moving involuntarily, twitching, leering. . . truly a person may become an abyss: Ifelt it happening to me. My visage became akaleidoscopic mask; people weren't sure whatthey were looking at. I could not translate. I feltnon-existence encroaching."

These evocative thoughts serve as anintroduction to the main story, “None ofThis IsReal." We begin with a character called “O” andhis adventures in everyday life, beginning with avisit to see his mother, Sonia. But who is “O”?

This “O" contains his own despair; he dreamsof a vast construction site . . .

“[H]e is the only one who realizes that thewhole work site is a merely a facade," that whatthey do is meaningless, building and destroyingpointlessly.

We learn about “O"'s disconcerting visit tothat palace of commodities, the Mall, and thathis mother has presented him with a pillowshe made; on it she has embroidered “Life's tooMysterious; Don't take it Serious.”

He visits a therapist who offers “customizedstability" through" Path to a Position,” that is,somatic realism. He recalls wanting to live outhis mother's fantasies of him as a great student,and he writes a novel.

Indeed, he had intended to write “anunprecedented, encyclopedic, world-historicalnovel." But there were so many distractionsz" . . .new techniques in climate change, adaptations,urban agriculture, toxic waste mitigation,soil retention, foreclosure opportunism,

oil spill cleanup, sex, and water filtrationwere considered more pressing than literaryinnovation. Climate change in particular gavehim nightmares."

Ifhe were to describe the novel, it wouldhave been: “post- political, social-realist . . . atransnational literary, neoteric, polyphonicSalt of the Earth or a revamped, reflexive, morerounded Life in the Iron Mills, complicatedlydramatizing individual stories behind globalstruggles to reclaim life's basic necessitieswhich, down to genetic material, were beingincreasingly privatized. . ."

“O" has a filing system and has kept a fileof “unbearable correspondences," objectivechances in the surrealist meaning of the tenn,which have confounded his sense of reality.What reality?

“What was the good of imagining reality? Andif there is no such thing as time in progress, whykeep recapitulating more falsehoods in the formof chronologies . . .Knowledge came and wentlike tides . . . Time moved like water."

“O" works in a library. In an especiallyinsightful and humorous passage, a part ofthe storyl particularly loved, because of myfascination with the ideas ofWilliam Iames, “O”is drawn to the self-help section of his library.(I'm fond of these books because you either findsome useful information or at the minimum, agood laugh.)

There he discovers “astonishingly the brightlycolored titles blaring words like Shame andAnger across the stacks. Occult, illness, dying,

sex, and relationships . . . One night he foundit in disarray, as though someone had had aparoxysm in the sex and relationship section."

Among the self-help books, the theme thatwas “especially prevalent was the argument thatrealitywas a product of individual will." In hisattempts to piece together an acceptable reality,“O” visits a fortune teller, a doctor at a free clinic,and a zoo elephant. Layers of images provokefurther images; the words have a hypnoticmagic that is close to musical.

In the story, “The Coffee Iockey," awomanconsiders that “she was of no use to the worldbut she found the world very useful indeed.Without the world, she thought, what would Ihave to look at?"

In “Triple Feature," we consider the movies.The piece reminds us that the mind loves toplay, rove though time, and experiment withunrestrained passions: “Her favorites wereset in distant places and times. Long-hairedbarbarians killed monsters and raped womenwhile gods rode on clouds. . .wore hardly anyclothing, at most chain mail bras, scandalssnaking up their shapely calves and diaphanousveils. . .Zenobia chained to a rock, kidnapped byan enormous lizard.’’

“Transformer” gives us several keys to earliermysteries. ‘f . .[I]n the old world, a woman askedher daughter to set fire to the woods with hermind.” Millis tells us that, "We live into the futurevia the shape of a word or letter which becomes

See TIME, page 47

FIFTH ESTATE

REVIEW:

Recipe forChangeBY DAVE NOT BOMBS

ven after three decades of Food NotBombs (FN B) volunteers sharing meals,smiles and good times with anyone who

happens to pass by, the authorities still don'tseem very inclined to give members of thedirect action anti-hunger group their properrespects.

Earlier this year city governments inPhiladelphia and Houston banned their localchapters from sharing food in public, althoughvocal pushback campaigns eventually forcedpoliticians to back down, at least partially,from their authoritarian decrees. In Orlando,Florida members of the local group areappealing a “Large Group Feeding Ordinance”that has temporarily led them to relocate theirfood shares in front of city hall.

On May 1, in an apparent effort to justifytheir laughable decision to put the groupon the “terrorist watch list," the FBI arrestedseveral Cleveland FNB volunteers for analleged bomb plot that's hard to describeas anything but a classic case of policeentrapment. [FE Note: see article on theCleveland 4 elsewhere in this issue.]

Halfway around the world in Minsk, Belarus,fifteen members of the group are now facingtrial following a police raid of a charityfundraiser.

It isn't surprising that the organization isfacing a wave of repression following therecent emergence of the Occupy Wall Streetmovement. Food Not Bombs, with its longtraditions of feeding the hungry, defendingpublic space, working through consensusand opposing policies which create hunger,poverty and war, can be seen as a model, if nota blueprint for the Occupy Movement.

FNB co-founder Keith McHenry gives a fullpicture of the Food Not Bombs movement inHungry For Peace that is part cookbook, parthistory, and part organizing guide.

Of course, clashes with the authorities arenothing new for those involved with Food Not

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Bombs.In the 1980s, the San Francisco FNB chapter

survived a sustained police effort to stompthem out that only ended when the groupprovided disaster relief in the aftermath ofthe devastating 1989 earthquake. In 2005right-wing skinheads martyred FNBer TimurKacharava in Moscow as he was sharing food.It took a protest of over 3,000 St. Petersburgstudents to force Russia's President VladimirPutin to punish those responsible for hisdeath.

Why are people in power so disturbed bymovements like Food Not Bombs and OccupyWall Street? It's really not that complicated.Rich people don't like seeing the homelessarid poor gather in public. It disturbs theircarefully constructed fantasy world. Thewell-off would much rather keep the rabblequarantined to some out of the way charitysoup kitchen, then come face-to-face withthose impacted by the poverty and politicaldisempowerment our society creates.

When people actually put aside theirdifferences and come together to help oneanother in a spirit of mutual aid, that's evenmore unacceptable to them. It threatensthe legitimacy of our winner-take-all socialsystem and poses alternatives to real socialills like wage slavery and top-down decision-making.

Food Not Bombs in particular is a greatexample of how to make a different worldhappen. Despite organized opposition, the

movement has flourished for over thirty yearsand spread across the globe from Bostonto San Francisco to Lagos, Bogata, and evenBeijing.

The FNB website (foodnotbombs.net)lists more than 600 chapters in over 60countries around the world, and yet there isno centralized body enforcing mandates to itsmembership. Instead, the whole philosophy ofthe group is summed up in three simple rules.

1. The food is vegan or vegetarian andno one is turned away. 2. Each chapteris independent and makes decisions byconsensus, a form of universal agreement. 3.FNB is dedicated to nonviolence.

These three principles have allowed thegroup to persevere throughout all manner ofrepression and opposition and helped createa worldwide movement dedicated to the ideathat the world's resources should be used tofeed people and not kill them through warsand militarism.

And, that's good news, because in anera where the world's elites are pushingobscene austerity policies that offer nothingbut misery for the world's inhabitants, therelevance of FNB’s direct action, egalitarianrecipe for change has never been greater.

The book is only $12 if ordered directlyfrom See Sharp Press: P.O. Box 1731,Tucson AZ 85702 or at seesharppress.com.Keith McHenry can be contacted throughfoodnotbombs.net.

FIFTH ESTATE

CitadalsFrom page 39

molasses inside and outside the museumduring its party in celebration oftwentyyears ofBP sponsorship, which, as objectivechance would have'it, was being held whileoil infamously gushed from the disastrousexplosion in the Gulf of Mexico of an offshoreBP oil rig.

As this intervention indicates, the User’sGuide calls for a decommodified art beyondthe self-congratulatory cynicism of the artworld. In the authors’ terms, what is neededis an art which allows us “to find each otheramongst the ruins."

Rather than being a “political” art thatis safely enclosed in a museum where itbecomes “a cool cultural mask over thecatastrophe that is capitalism" and “anaesthetic amplifier of the status quo,” theychampioned a disobedient “art that does notshow the world to us, but changes it.”

The task of radical artists in this regardis to create such art in order to dismantleand reinvent daily life so as to “step intothe cracks where another world is cominginto view.” Beyond the now clichéd bumpersticker slogan, “Another World is Possible,’lies the subversive power of impossibility. Or,as some California students so bluntly putit in After The Future, “Another world is notpossible. It is necessary.”

Both artists and university occupiers (twocategories that are not mutually exclusive)are urged by the authors to simultaneouslyrefuse the dictates of capitalist stateinstitutions and build places where thesubversive power of the imagination canflourish. Ultimately, the goal is not only theabolition of the corporate university, butself-abolition.

As the User’s Guide explains:“Ifyou're opposed to the logic of turning

art or education into a market, you arealready opposed to yourself as defined bythat logic: you are not the artist, student orworker that capital needs. This means youhave already begun to abolish yourself.”

The next step then becomes one ofabolishing art itself as a specialized activitythat can only be undertaken by university-credentialed art professionals endowed witha closely guarded investment in culturalcapital. The burning question of how we

bring to life Lautréamont's prescient watch-words: “Poetry must be made by all,” stillhangs fire.

In this regard, we must be wary offormulating an unnecessarily heroicvision of the art activist as “engineer of theimagination." In order to avoid the trap ofelitism, perhaps it might be useful to envisionthe “reverse imagineering” practices ofpirating, appropriating and recreating in afluid bottom-up context.

Ifprofessionalism is rooted in the idea ofmonopoly, then the sharing of the stories,ideas and tactics of art activism in themanner of the User's Guide, is, at its heart, ade-professionalization project. As such, it wasundertaken not to glamorize a new brand ofactivist art stars, but to freely disseminate theaesthetics and skills ofpolitically-engagedart activism so that others might feel inspiredto pick up the torch and run with it. Ratherthan the cultivation of celebrity and audiencepassivity, the assumption at work here is thatcreative participation is the key to openingthe floodgates of the radical imagination.

In a closing note, written in an explicitlysurrealist context, the authors expoundupon the complex nature of “demandingthe impossible" that is so crucial to theirproject. In doing so, they redefine hopein the non-messianic immediacy of notknowing what will happen next and echothe concerns of the California studentoccupation statements in After The Fall:

“Some might decry us as naive romantics,utopian dreamers, but we know that tolimit demands to what seems ‘realistic’ is aguaranteed way of reducing what is possible.Protest is beautiful because it breaks openthe routines of space and time, to allowthe unimaginable to flourish, its beautifulbecause at its heart is hope, hope that, as theSurrealists understood so deeply, dream andaction can be reunited."

Ron Sakolsky spent eight years as aradical student dodging/resisting the draftwhile enrolled in New York City colleges,universities and graduate schools in the‘Sixties, and the next 30 years teachinganarchy while shoveling shit against thetide in interdisciplinary and experimentallearning programs in the private andpublic university trenches of New YorkCity; Utica, New York; Springfield, Illinois;Olympia,Washington, and post-apartheidDurban, South Africa.

TieReality

From page 39

the geography—imaginary at first-ofourdestination.’' Is this a clue to the identity of “O”?

We began with a character named “O”on a visit to see his mother. “O” has multipleassociations and already my mind rushes off.I recall the Story ofO by Pauline Réage (AnneDesclos) still unexcelled as a tale ofpleasurethrough absolute sexual submission, but this “O,”Millis's character, is masculine. . .but is our self,still.

Then, I remember “O” for Orlando, the talewell-loved by me as a teenager written byVirginiaWoolf, ofthe character whose sex changesthough each ofhis historical incamations. Or,maybe “O” is for the cipher or zero, the numeralinvented by Leonardo Fibonacci in 1202.

Who is “O”? I think ofopenness, orbit,ontology; I think ofOcean, of Orion, of Orchids,of the Oneness ofoscillating obsessions ofOrion’s orchard oforgasmic orchids. The mind issuch a strange place.

What this fine book, full of the secrets ofoursubterranean existence, has done is disassembleus into small pieces and then reconstruct us ascharacters with x-ray vision. History, memory, intheir protean mutability, is one ofmy concemsas is the liberation of our dreams and thereconstruction ofdaily life with the inspiration ofsturealism.

In this book, the Mechanics of the Universecollide with personal historical forces and withArchimedes, we ask, “only give me a place tostand and I will move the Earth."

But one ofmost provocative ofall thestatements, I think, is the woman's advice to herdaughter in the story, “Transfonnerff . .[A]fter allit is your choice whatyou do in life, will you setfire to the wood, the world, with your mind. “Door do not. There is no try.’’

Penelope Rosemont met with AndréBreton and the Paris surrealist group in1965-66. She edited Surrealist Women: AnInternational Anthology. Her latest book isa memoir, Dreams 6‘ Everyday Life: AndréBreton, Surrealism, Rebel Worker, sds 8the Seven Cities of Cibola, Charles H. Kerr,pubfisher

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