This week, we feature two conversations that from two different settler-colonial states on Turtle Island. First up, organizers in so-called Quebec called Ni Frontiers Ni Prison talk about resisting Laval prison and the border regime of the Canadian state. Then, Robert Free, a long-term Tewa resident of Seattle, WA, talks about the struggle to wrest territory from the hands of the US military and found the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.
Today we have a two part show! In the first part we are presenting a conversation with someone from Ni Frontiers Ni Prison, which is a group in so called Canada that is resisting the proposed construction of a new migrant prison in Laval, a town just outside of Montreal. This is a transcript of the original audio, read for the show by Grier, shout out to him! In this interview we talk about the prison and what it would mean for people who’d be most affected by it, the general rise of far right sentiment in so called Canada, and many more topics.
The interviewee names the place they are based as occupied Tio’tia:ke (jo-jahg’-eh), which is the original indigenous name for so called Montreal, the colonizer name. The naming of indigenous land will continue throughout the interview with various locations in the name of decolonization, though Tio’tia:ke is the one which will be the most prominent.
As an audio note to all those paying attention, a fridge turns on midway through the interview then turns back off nearing the end, we’ve tried to minimize the background noise but it’s still somewhat noticeable.
Music for the intro and outro by A Tribe Called Red with Stadium Pow Wow.
Some links to historical events mentioned by our guest relating to Canada’s’ treatment of immigrants and refugees:
“Chinese Head Tax“, a policy which “meant to discourage Chinese people from entering Canada after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway”, a government project which I conjecture used a bunch of precarious and immigrant labor in order to complete.
Komagata Maru Incident, the historic entry denial of a group of Indian refugees seeking entry into Canada on the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru in 1914, resulting in the death of 20 Sikh people at the hands of the then occupying British government.
“None Is Too Many” policy for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, an anti Semitic stance that put people who were fleeing Nazi terror in further danger and possible death.
Robert Free on the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center
(starts at 38min, 04sec)
Next we’ll hear an interview with Robert Free, a long-term Seattle, WA resident and Tewa (pronounced tay-oh-wa) Native American. We discuss the history of the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, a cultural and resource center for urban Native Americans in Seattle and the surrounding communities. The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center was established after a series of protests and occupations in 1970 of Fort Lawton, an army base that had previously occupied the park. Robert Free discusses the influencing factors of that time, some of the finer points of the occupations, as well as the implications of protesting and occupation on stolen native land.
Some of the names and events mentioned in this chat you may recognize from our February 17th, 2019, episode of The Final Straw when we had the pleasure to speak with Paulette D’auteuil, about the case of long-term American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier. More info on Peltier’s case can be found at whoisleonardpeltier.info
. … . ..
Next week we hope to bring you a conversation with support crew for incarcerated former military whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is now imprisoned for refusing to testify before a Grand Jury. More on her case can be found at https://xychelsea.is including links for donating towards her fundraising goal for legal costs aiming at 150 thousand smackeroos.
On December 7, 2018, Columbus police murdered 16 year old Julius Ervin Tate Jr.. On December 13, they arrested his 16 year old girlfriend, Masonique Saunders, charging her with the murder they committed.
Masonique is being charged with aggravated robbery and felony murder, and is currently being held in juvenile detention. The police have alleged that Julius attempted to rob, and pulled a gun on a police officer, and that Masonique was involved in said robbery. Felony murder means that if you commit a felony and someone dies as a result of that crime you can be charged with their murder.
We believe that these charges are unjust, and demand the freedom of this 16 year old Black girl and justice for the family of Julius Tate!
To help Masonique and her family, donate to her GoFundMe.
A quick reminder, if you’re in the Asheville area this coming week, Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross is hosting two events. On Friday, April 4th from 6:30 to 8pm at Firestorm, (as we do every first Friday of the month) BRABC will show the latest episode of Trouble, by sub.Media. Episode 19 focuses on Technology and Social Control. After the ½ hour video we’ll turn chairs around and have a discussion of the film for those who’d like. Then, on Sunday, April 6th from 5-7pm as BRABC does every first Sunday of the month, we’ll be hosting a monthly letter writing event. We’ll provide names, addresses, backstories, postage and stationary.
Prisoners we’ll focus on are longterm political prisoners from Black liberation, to Earth and Animal Liberation, to anti-police violence activists caught up in prison whose birthdays are coming up or who are facing severe repression. Or, just come and write a letter you’ve been meaning to write to someone else. It’s a nice environ for that sort of thing.
Extinction Rebellion week of action
The movement to halt and roll back human driven climate change called Extinction Rebellion is planning some upcoming events in the so-called U.S. in line with a worldwide call for action over the week of April 15-22nd. Check out https://extinctionrebellion.us/rebellion-week for info and ways to plug in. If you’re in the L.A. area, see our shownotes for a fedbook link to some of their upcoming events. And remember, practice good security culture by not giving up as little info as possible. Keeping your info more secure today ensures your ability to fight with less hindrance tomorrow!
Marius Mason moved
Anarchist political prisoner Marius Mason has been moved to a prison in Connecticut, a change viewed as a success by his supporters as he’s closer to family by hundreds of miles. If you’d like to write him a letter to welcome him to his new place, consider writing him at the following site, but make sure to address it as follows:
Now, here’s a statement by the Highlander Research and Education Center outside of New Market, TN, about the fire early on March 29, 2019:
“Early this morning, officials responded to a serious fire on the grounds of the Highlander Research and Education Center, one of the nation’s oldest social justice institutions that provides training and education for emerging and existing movements throughout the South, Appalachia, and the world.
As of 6am, the main office building was completely engulfed and destroyed. One of ten structures on approximately 200 acres, the building housed the offices of the organization’s leadership and staff. Highlander’s staff released the following statement:
“Highlander has been a movement home for nearly 87 years and has weathered many storms. This is no different. Several people were on the grounds at the time of the fire, but thankfully no one was inside the structure and no one was injured.
“While we are physically unhurt, we are saddened about the loss of our main office. The fire destroyed decades of historic documents, speeches, artifacts and memorabilia from movements of all kinds, including the Civil Rights Movement. A fuller assessment of the damage will be forthcoming once we are cleared to enter the remains of the building.
“We are grateful for the support of the many movements who are now showing up for us in this critical time. This has been a space for training, strategy and respite for decades and it will continue to be for decades to come.
Fire officials are working to determine the cause as quickly as possible and we are monitoring the investigation closely.” –Ash-Lee Woodward Henderson and Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele, Co-Executive Directors, Highlander Research and Education Center.
Highlander has played a critical role in the Civil Rights Movement, training and supporting the work of a number of movement activists: Rosa Parks prior to her historic role in the Montgomery Bus Boycot, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Septima Clark, Anne Braden, Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, Hollis Watkins, Bernard Lafayette, Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis.”
On March 25, 2019, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Wende Kerl shot and killed Danquirs Franklin in the parking lot of the Burger King on Beatties Ford Rd in Charlotte. Police narratives posit that Mr Franklin was armed and posing a threat, while eye witnesses say that Danquirs Franklin interceded against an armed man bothering an employee and that the armed man ran away before the police arrived, who then shot the first black man they encountered. Friends at Charlotte Uprising have been holding vigil and fundraising for Danquirs Franklin’s family as the police’s actions leave his child fatherless. More can be found at the Charlotte Uprising twitter and fedbook pages. Rise In Power, Danquirs.
William Goodenuff: First of all, thank you so much for your time in coming onto this radio show! Could you first talk about what is attempting to be planned on the part of the Canadian state in terms of this migrant prison in Laval?
Ni Frontieres Ni Prisons: Yeah! So the proposed new migrant prison is actually one part of a plan that the Canadian government announced just over two years ago now. It’s called the National Immigration Detention Framework. And the plan came in response to a period of sustained resistance against the government’s practice of incarcerating migrants, many in provincial jails. Um, and for years, going back to 2011, migrants held by the CBSA (which is the Canada Border Services Agency), had been going on periodic hunger strikes in facilities across Ontario. And in the months before the governments announcement of this plan a new hunger strike was initiated, and there were mobilizations across the country in solidarity. There was a lot of pressure on the government to do something, especially because several migrants had died in CBSA custody over that same period.
And so the government responds to all this by announcing a new $138 million plan, but instead of ceding to the demands of the hunger strikers, most of the money ends up being dedicated to building two new migrant prisons, one in [Sur ABC] replacing the CBSA’s Vancouver Airport Facility, and one in Laval replacing the current one just across the street. So strengthening the detention system that the hunger strikers were fighting against. Many detained migrants in Ontario actually went back on hunger strike following the announcement but the government just ignored them.
W: Is there anything more to say about the sustained period of resistance on the part of people who were in custody and people who weren’t in custody?
NFNP: Because it’s been so long now I feel like I hesitate to talk more in depth about it because I’m worried I’ll get something wrong.
W: That’s totally fine. So you talked a little bit about how it got started, in what ways have people already been resisting the prison?
NFNP: Right, so in 2017 the government hired two architecture firms, one called Lamais one called Group A, to design the new prison. And Solidarity Across Borders, which is a migrant justice network that’s been based here in occupied Tio’tia:ke for over 15 years now, was one of the first groups to talk publicly about this, which brought the project to a lot of people’s attention including myself. And the resistance since then has been focused on the companies working on the project. Last year, an anonymous group released crickets into Lamais’ headquarters, that was great! A nice biblical flourish!
And last month the group I’m a part of, Ni frontiers ni prisons, organized a demonstration against Lamais that ended at their headquarters. Since then, a company that remediated the soil at the proposed construction site had their offices spray painted, and just a few weeks ago a group of about 30 people barricaded the road leading to what was called the “site visit” for companies who want to bid on the contract to build the prison. So that’s a bit of an overview of what’s been happening. Ni Frontiers Ni Prison which I’m a part of is focused more on organizing public actions and events which are just one part of the struggle against the construction of the prison which includes a diversity of tactics in multiple groups.
W: Does the group work in coalition with other groups that are fighting the prison or people that are detained in the prison?
NFNP: So there’s no formal coalition but there is dialogue and discussion between other groups who are also doing work against this specific prison but also against migrant detention more generally, working for status for all against the border. And so Solidarity Across Borders is a group that includes many people without status, many people who have been through the current migrant detention center and have been doing that work for a very long time.
W: So, I would really love to get a sense, and maybe listeners already know these things based on their own experiences, but what would this prison mean for those people who would be most directly affected by it?
NFNP: Right, so the first thing I should say is that migrant detention is central to Canada’s ability to deport people. And the CBSA has made a commitment recently to start increasing deportations by about 30%. So this prison represents an investment in both the continued violence of deportation as well as detention. But in practical terms, strengthening that threat of violence means that it’ll continue to be almost impossible to seek services here, or to resist exploitation. It maintains them as a source of precarious and exploitable labor.
But I mean, the violence of the migrant prison itself can’t be understated, people are often imprisoned in these facilities for years without charge. People die in these facilities, and I believe very strongly that prisons aren’t the answer to the challenges we face in our communities; locking people up, limiting people’s movement, deporting people to dangerous situations, or possible death, all of these things only cause more violence and harm.
Speaking for myself, I want to live in a world without prisons and without borders where people actually have the things they need to live their lives with dignity and respect.
W: Definitely, and it’s been my understanding too. In the US as well prisons are a huge source of capitaistic gain and a source of precarious and exploitable labor like you mentioned so that makes a lot of sense just for me coming from a US context.
So at the radio show we’ve been hearing about this prison couched in terms of humanity, like it would be a so called “more humane detention center”. And you mentioned that it was being built like right across the street or right next to a detention center that already exists. Would you talk about why the Canadian state is attempting this branding right now?
NFNP: Yeah, so the government has been marketing this entire project as creating a more humane approach to incarcerating migrants, but it’s just an attempt to change the subject from the question of why the government is putting migrants in prison to begin with, something a lot of people started asking following the hunger strikes. And if you look at the designs that the architects put together it makes it really clear whats actually going on, like the plans talk about how all the fencing around the prison needs to be covered by foliage to limit what it calls “the harshness of the look”, or that the iron bars over the windows have to be as inconspicuous as possible to the outside public, and that the children’s area needs to be bordered by what they call a 6 foot high visual barrier to make sure that no one outside can see the imprisoned children.
So essentially it’s just a new prison with a nicer looking face. And if you’re being separated from your family , your community, awaiting deportation to possible torture or death, I highly doubt you’re gonna be too concerned with how sustainable the concrete is or what color the ceilings are in the prison you’re being held in. But another element of this plan is something that the government is marketing as “alternatives to detention”. I mean, these programs only make up something like 3% of the total budget of the plan, but it’s been a central part of its marketing as a more humane approach than the previous government. These alternatives, they include forcing migrants to wear electronic ankle bracelets so their movements can be tracked. There’s this collaboration with the John Howard Society to force migrants into their halfway houses, they’ve also created this gps phone reporting system that forces migrants to make regular check in calls that test their voice prints. And so these are all ways that the government is actually expanding its capacity for surveillance and control of migrants outside of its prisons. Ya know, before the only option was detaining or releasing people but now they’re expanding their reach. And there was actually a renewed hunger strike by incarcerated migrants when these alternatives were launched last year, but again the government just ignored them.
W: And I’m assuming that the halfway house that you mentioned as well as the ankle bracelets, are those a for profit endeavor?
NFNP: So yeah, the halfway houses, the John Howard Society, got a multi million dollar contract to oversee that project. I’m not sure offhand what the company is that’s overseeing the ankle bracelets, but the technology was actually engineered as part of the post 9/11 national security certificate program here, which involved imprisoning non-citizens indefinitely without charge on secret evidence, mostly it was Arab and Muslim men. And some of those men who were caught up in the system in the early 2000’s, they actually requested to be transferred back to prison rather than continuing to live with those ankle monitors, because of how intense and repressive that system really was. But it’s really clear with these alternatives that all these carceral technologies that have been used in these post 9/11 sort of state of exception moments, but also through the federal prison system are leaking in and bleeding in to the system of how Canada relates to migrant populations.
W: It’s like bringing the prison into the home is kinda my experience of how ankle monitors generally work.
And I’m really bothered by this entire situation, but also this sort of softer, gentler prison where you can’t really see the kids and the harshness of the prison is dulled by some kind of fake foliage. The quality of the Canadian state is something that as a US resident I’m not really all that informed about but what I have been informed of, it’s just like extraordinarily toxic neoliberal cooptation of like “diversity” and “understanding” when it in fact is a genocidal machine.
NFNP: Yeah I think that was very well put!
W: I’ve been listening to a lot of From Embers (anarchist radio show at http://fromembers.libsyn.com/) so I’ve been like “this fucking Canadian state is a fucking hellscape!”
But yeah thank you for going into that, the ankle bracelets and the for profit nature of the John Howard Society.
So, speaking of the state, I think that people all over the world have been noting the increasingly frenetic attention that governments are paying to borders, with similarly increasingly racist rhetoric applied to many people seeking safety in places like so called Canada, so called US, and UK. Are there things to keep in mind about this proposed detention center in this current polarizing climate?
NFNP: Right. So over the past few years in Quebec we’ve seen the rise of far right anti-immigrant groups that have actually achieved a level of mass support here that I think is unique compared to the rest of the country. And this is for a lot of reasons, an important one is the turn of Quebec nationalism toward a very xenophobic form of state secularism. And that’s resulted in a huge increase of attacks on Muslim people, a formal ban on anyone wearing non Christian religious symbols from either working or receiving services from the Quebec government–
W: Wait, really??
NFNP: Yeah… And also of course there’s the mass murder at the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City. But it’s also resulted in a new far right government that ran on substantially reducing immigration to Quebec and also introducing values and language tests for new migrants, which they’ve begun to put in place. And so, this more I guess local far right upsurge in anti-immigrant sentiment is increasingly bolstering support here for the federal government’s deportation regime.
And I think this makes it an important moment to intervene, to help disrupt that. Because I think that fighting back against the rise of the sentiment needs to be more than a one pronged fight against the far right groups on the ground. I really think that the struggle also needs to be connected to sustained resistance toward the racist structures that pre-date these groups. These structures often share a vision with these newer far right groups, but I think there may be more fundamental parts of our colonial context here.
W: Yeah, definitely! I’m wondering if you would say more about fighting against the structures that pre-date the current governmental climate, or political climate that’s happening right now? What would you think would be involved in that?
NFNP: Oh! Well I think that migration policy is a great example of this, where so much of the focus of that conversation around the country and in Quebec right now is so focused around people crossing the border from the United States on foot into Canada. And talking about the influx of refugees who are crossing into Canada or applying for refugee status here, many of which are being denied.
But the entire apparatus of detention and deportation completely pre-dates this.
It’s in fact not linked to this upsurge in migration, it’s linked to the temporization of status for people here, which has been going back for decades. And if we’re only looking at what’s directly in front of us, we’re not gonna understand or be able to effectively confront these structures that are MUCH more deeply rooted in the fabric of the Canadian state and in Canadian history.
W: Thank you very much for bringing up that point! And I think that goes really well into the next questions which is, would you talk about how the concept of citizenship is being weaponized by the state in this case but also has always been weaponized by the state?
NFNP: Yeah, I mean the concept of citizenship has always been based on exclusion, and the Canadian context is no different! Things like the Chinese Head Tax, the Komagata Maru incident, the None is Too Many Policy toward Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, the Canadian state’s approach to immigration has always been shaped by its white supremacist foundations. And actually with the exception of the British Commonwealth countries, Canada had an official ‘whites only’ immigration policy until the ’60s. But since the 1960’s the government, like I was saying, it’s been increasingly temporizing the status of people coming here. It’s gotten to the point where now over 2/3rds of people who are granted status to live and work here each year are getting some form of temporary status.
And so the CBSA’s migrant detention and deportation apparatus was built to enforce this, it was a necessary by-product of these changes. And that system is part of maintaining the flow of wealth from the global South to the global North. Workers from the global South come here, have their labor exploited at extreme levels, put huge sums of money into the Canadian economy, and then they’re kicked out. And Canada doesn’t just benefit from this but it actively participates in impoverishing and displacing people in the global South who then end up their doorstep.
W: Definitely, I think there’s a lot to talk about there but I think you gave a really good summary. And I think that I would love to move on to some other questions which have to do with the more positive aspects of the resistance to this thing. So, we in the states are familiar with the concept of a sanctuary city, which indicates that a place limits their cooperation with the national government to follow through on deportations in many ways. But I came across the term “solidarity city” in articles on your website, would you talk about the distinction between the two, and what is meant by “solidarity city”?
NFNP: Oh sure! So this is actually a framing that comes out of the work of Solidarity Across Borders. Sanctuary city campaigns, they tend to be focused on asking the municipal government to protect people without status. But for years now, Solidarity Across Borders has put forward the analysis that we should be creating our own networks of mutual aid and solidarity. And a good example for this is the police, y’know at least here the police are one of the biggest problems that undocumented migrants face. And that problem doesn’t go away with city officials signing a sanctuary city declaration. The last mayor here actually announced that Montreal was a sanctuary city, but nothing changed. The police continued to collaborate with the CBSA to detain and deport people.
But a solidarity city is different because it’s something that’s built from the ground up, through building networks of resistance and non-cooperation with those agencies that enforce deportations and detentions, not by appealing to power.
W: Yeah, I think that building from the ground up while at the same time refusing cooperation is sparking something in my head. Thanks for talking about that!
W: So would you speak about this struggle in terms of decolonization? What are some parallels that you can locate between decolonization and a project that has a more anti-border ethic?
NFNP: Right! So the most influential border around us here in occupied Tio’tia:ke is the American border, which is very close by. And about two hours east of us here is Akwesasne (a-kwa-sas’-nay), which is Kanienkiahaka (kan-eh-ga-hag’-ay) territory, this territory additionally is recognized as a federal reserve. Tio’tia:ke is also Kanienkiahaka territory but isn’t federally recognized as such. Akwasasne itself is actually cut in two by that border, and there’s been conflict for decades there between the CBSA who attempt to enforce that border and indigenous people who refuse to acknowledge their authority on their territory.
So anyway, all this is to say that it’s very clear here the ways that the borders around us are fairly recent colonial constructions. But since we’re talking about prisons, in Canada incarceration as a practice was largely spread as part of the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples, as a tool of assimilation. And today when you look at who’s inside Canadian prisons, indigenous people are dis-proportionally represented.
And so, the same colonial and capitalist forces that are creating war, poverty, destruction, throughout the global South are continuing to oversee the genocide and dispossession of Indigenous peoples here in the global North. Many people being displaced and arriving to this territory are indigenous to different areas on this continent and many of them are ending up in these migrant prisons.
But over the last decade or so here, different migrant justice formations have gone through processes of dialogue and discussion with indigenous groups. Which has led to some changes in messaging and outlook over time and I mean, we’ve been influenced by this too, but as settlers we have a lot more work to do on this front I think.
W: Definitely, did I understand you correctly that indigenous folks are being incarcerated in these migrant jails?
NFNP: Well, not people who are indigenous to the territories governed by the Canadian state, but people who are indigenous to like other areas on the continent who are then displaced and would not be understood or classified by the Canadian state as their indigenous identity based on the country of origin.
W: Yeah for sure! The border is a colonial construct, and the indigenous territories obviously vastly predate that colonial construct.
So, how can people support the group that you are speaking from, Ni Frontiers Ni Prison, and could you also brainstorm modes of support that folks can enact who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to do confrontational or legally risky direct action?
NFNP: Oh yeah for sure! So this month we actually have a call in campaign, where we’re encouraging folks to either call, email, or fax the companies who are currently bidding for the contract to build this new prison. So we highly encourage anyone who would like to to do this, you can go on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nifrontieresniprisons/, and you’ll see the information about the call in campaign there.
But in terms of non risky ways to participate in struggle like this, the group I’m a part of we do public actions, and the demonstrations we’ve organized so far have been very low risk, very family friendly to quote maybe an outdated activist parlance. We have been helping organize
information sessions in neighborhoods across the city in partnership with different groups, artists have contributed a series of posters which people have been helping put up across the city, people have made videos about the struggle against the prison, or written articles, there’s a lot of ways that people have contributed and continue to and to participate in this that isn’t particularly high risk. Particularly right now we could actually use some help spreading word about the struggle and why we’re in opposition to the prison.
W: I wonder if you have any words about the importance of the call in campaign, cause I think that many anarchists, at least many anarchists that I know are a little bit hesitant to do call in campaigns, would you talk about the importance of that tactic?
NFNP: Oh sure! I mean, I can talk about it in context to our strategy here, we decided to focus on the call in campaign after an action that happened disrupting a site visit that the CBSA organized to talk with the people interested in bidding on the contract to build the prison. And so people went there and disrupted it, and there were a lot of conversations with workers from the companies who had been sent there to talk with the CBSA about the contract. And some of those conversations went really well! What we’re trying to do in this phase before the general contractor is chosen to build the prison, is to let all the companies know who are considering doing this work that there will be resistance if they decide to take that contract. To let them know that it may be in their financial best interest to walk away from this project. And that strategy will continue depending on what company is chosen, but obviously the tactics will shift.
W: I’m also really interested in hearing any words that you have about like the nature of the tactic of a call in campaign. Maybe this is a bit of a circular or esoteric question but I’m wanting to like provide people with some sort of way to mentally grasp on to what is being achieved here and what is being proposed, and what the goals are generally of something like that?
Is it just annoyance or–
NFNP: Well there are multiple reasons for it, like on one side of it there is the effect of heightening the contradictions that actually already exist within some of these companies in relationship to projects like this. Of creating a sense of wariness on the part of these companies about embarking, but it also gives a way for organizations and for individuals to engage with the struggle at the faze that it’s at right now. So you don’t have to go if you can’t go to a public demonstration.
W: It makes sense cause it is a “safer” way to participate in showing dissent.
NFNP: Yeah! And also we can’t rely on mainstream corporate media to relay a message to these companies that there is widespread opposition to the practice of incarcerating migrants, like we need to do that ourselves! And what that looks like is actually going and disrupting their events and their meetings, and showing up at their workplaces. But it also means calling them incessantly and sending them endless faxes with lots of black ink. To let them know that this is the wrong move for them, and if they make it things like this will probably increase, and that’s generally the thinking behind it.
W: Excellent, thank you so much! So those are all the questions that I had! Is there anything you’d like to add or words you’d leave listeners with?
NFNP: The only thing I haven’t mentioned is that at the end of this month, the government is scheduled to make a decision about which company they’re gonna give the contract to to build the new prison. And depending on who that is I’m sure there will be actions coming up! So if you wanna keep up on what’s happening with the struggle you can go to stopponslaprison.info, it’s a clearing house for information about the construction of the prison as well as resistance against it. Or you can follow us on Facebook and you can send us an email at nifrontiersniprison@riseup.net if you wanna get involved.
W: Is there anything that we missed that you wanted to give more voice to or present here?
NFNP: No I think we covered it! Thanks so much for the time and for taking an interest in this struggle!
W: Yeah! I think that the world has always been moving toward something like this and shit like this has happened before, and thank you for the work that you do and your time in coming onto the radio.
Gord Hill is an indigenous author, anarchist, antifascist and militant, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation living in so-called British Columbia, Canada. Gord is also graphic artist and comic book author who most recently published The Antifa Comic Book, out from Arsenal Pulp Press, and runs the website Warrior Publications and sometimes publishes under the nom-de-plume of ZigZag.
For the hour we speak about his writings documenting indigenous resistance history in the so-called Americas (mostly with a focus on Turtle Island), antifascist organizing, intersections of indigenous struggle and anarchism and critiques of Pacifism (see Gord’s “Smash Pacifism” zine). Some of the points of resistance that we cover include Elsipogtog (Elsipogtog in 5 Minutes video at sub.media), Idle No More, The Oka Crisis (“The Oka Crisis in 5 Minutes” video at sub.media), Stoney Point/Aazhoodena (another 5 minutes video by Gord), Gustafsen Lake (we didn’t talk about but another 5 minute video), the Zapatista Rebellion and the Unist’ot’en Camp resistance to pipelines in so-called B.C.
Sean Swain: [ 00:033:55 ], Gord Hill [ 00:11:27 ], announces at [ 00:57:29 ]
Rayquan Borum Trial Update
In a brief and sad update to last week’s interview on the case of Rayquan Borum, we’d like to read a statement from the fedbook page for Charlotte Uprising:
We are deeply saddened to report that Rayquan Borum has been found guilty of possession of a firearm and second degree murder with him being sentenced to 25/26 years in a cage.
We knew it would be difficult to receive a fair trial in the same court that allowed Officer Randall Kerrick to walk free for the murder of unarmed Jonathan Ferrell. We know the police will continue to kill Black and brown folks and escape accountability.
We suffered extreme suppression from the judge from the start of the trial. Even though the medical examiner testified there was a 51% chance that ANYTHING else killed Justin Carr, Judge Hayes would not allow any testimony naming the police. Of course, it is far easier to scapegoat a random Black man than to launch an investigation into the same police force that killed ONLY Black people in 2015.
We also know that Justin Carr would be alive were it not for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department murder of Keith Lamont Scott (no trial for that officer, of course). We know that the Mecklenburg County Courts disproportionately sentence Black and brown bodies to time in cages. We know that CMPD disproportionately arrests Black and brown folks. Black people are 30% of Charlotte’s population and make up about 70% of the jail population.
Heinous.
We know that this is the American Way. In response, we will continue to rise up and resist this colonized nation and work toward building a more decolonized world, for all of us.
A few house keeping notes about the show. We’re happy to announce that The Final Straw is now available on the Pacifica Radio platform for affiliate stations to pick up more easily. If you, dear listener, live in an area where we aren’t on the radio but there’s a community station that airs programming from the Pacifica Network, you now have a WAY easier IN to bug the station’s programming director with. If you want us on your airwaves, check out our “broadcasting” tab on our website and reach out to a local radio station. If you have questions or want help, reach out to us and we’re happy to chat. We hope to have a some more terrestrial broadcast stations to announce soon.
Actually, yah, that was the only note. Tee hee. Otherwise, if you want to hear me, Barchive is linked up in our show notesursts, Dj’ing a 2 hour set of punk, goth and electronica on AshevilleFM, an archive is linked up in our show notes that’s available until March 12th.
Announcements
Asheville Events
If you’re in the Asheville area, there’re a few events coming up on March 16th of note. At 11am at Firestorm books, a participant in the Internationalist Commune, a self-organized collective in Northern Syria, will join us for a video chat about the revolutionary movement to transform Kurdish territory into a stateless society.
Later, across town, there’re a couple of Blue Ridge ABC events at Static Age on Saturday, March 16th. From 3-5pm there’ll be an N64 Super Smash Brothers tournament with vegan philly cheese steaks and fries available, and then from 9pm onward an antifascist black metal show featuring Arid from Chicago, plus local bands Rat Broth and Feminazgul.
Then, a reminder, that on March 22nd at the Block Off Biltmore is a benefit for info-sharing between Southern Appalachia and Rojava. The event will include a discussion, a short documentary showing, vegan desserts and nice merchandise. For more info, check out the flyer in our shownotes from March 3rd, 2019.
And now a couple of prisoner announcements
Chelsea Manning Imprisoned
U.S. Army whistleblower and former Political Prisoner, Chelsae Manning, has been jailed for criminal contempt for refusing a subpoena to participate in a Federal Grand Jury in Virginia concerning her 2010 disclosures to Wikileaks of U.S. drone killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. A support committee called “Chelsea Resists!” has been set up and updates will be coming from the website xychelsea.is and there’s a fundraiser up at actionnetwork.com for her as well. We hope to feature members of her support as well as former Grand Jury resisters who’ve been on this show before in an episode soon. You can write to Chelsea at the following address:
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning
AO181426
William G. Trusdale Adult Detention Center
2001 Mill Road
Alexandria, VA 22314
Some quick guidelines to keep her safer while writing are in the show notes
Address your letter exactly as shown above
send letters on white paper
use the mail service to send letters
include color drawings if you’d like
sparingly send 4×6 photos, as she may only keep 10 at a time
Do not send cards, packages, postcards, photocopies or cash
Do not decorate the outside of the envelope
do not send books or magazines
Exonerated Vaughn 17 prisoners transferred out of state
As the cases proceed against the Vaughn17, 17 prisoners on trial in Delaware for a prison uprising following the election of Trump as president, an uprising sometimes compared to the Lucasville Uprising, repression continues.
The uprising was as follows: prisoners took over Building C at the Vaughn prison in Smyrna, Delaware, and took three prison guards and one prison counselor hostage. Demands issued during the hostage standoff included that Delaware Governor John Carney investigate poor living conditions at the facility. One correctional officer who was taken hostage, Steven Floyd, would later be found dead after police re-entered the facility. The case can be followed at vaughn17support.org as it enters it’s third trial group. A few words from the support site note the continued repression of some of the court-exonerated prisoners:
The State of Delaware retaliated against defendants in the Vaughn uprising trial last week, by moving them out of state to Pennsylvania.
Kevin Berry, Abednego Baynes, Obadiah Miller, Johnny Bramble, Dwayne Staats, and Jarreau Ayers were all transferred to solitary confinement at SCI Camp Hill, a maximum security facility. They joined Deric Forney, who was transferred weeks earlier in January. Berry, Baynes, and Forney have all been fully acquitted on all charges.
“It’s unusual to move prisoners with short terms left in their sentence out of state,” said Fariha Huriya, an organizer working closely with Vaughn 17 prisoners. “They’re being held in solitary confinement, with no showers, no access to commissary, and limited phone calls. It’s the same inhumane conditions that they faced at James T. Vaughn.”
“The State’s vindictiveness will cost them,” said Betty Rothstein, who also organizes with the prisoners. “The Vaughn 17 have resisted these charges, and will continue to resist and expose the corruption of the DOC and abuse on prisoners.”
There are nine defendants who are still awaiting trial. New trial dates for groups 3 and 4 are scheduled for May 6th, 2019, and October 21st, 2019.
This week on The Final Straw, the episode’s theme is anarchist interventions in struggles around the world. We’ll be sharing audios from comrades in the A-Radio Network, which just had it’s 5th Annual Gathering in Zurich, Switzerland. The A-Radio Network is made up of stations around Europe, plus a smattering in South + North America. We have been a member of the ARN for 4 years now, which over the last year and a half produces the monthly B(A)DNews: Angry Voices From Around The World news podcast in English, made up of contributions by A-Radio member-projects. You can find past episodes at our website.
In lieu of this month’s BADNews, the gathering produced an 8 hour radio show last week and elements of this broadcast. We’ll present here two interviews from that broadcast concerning the struggle for autonomy in the social revolutionary region of Rojava, in northern Syria. The first is with a fighter with the Tekosina Anarsist (Anarchist Struggle, starts at 42:49) and the second with Zaher Baher, a member of the Kurdish Anarchist Forum in London (starts at 57:04). well as one from another an interview conducted a week ago with an anarchist in Paris, France, involved with the Yellow Vest (Gilets jaunes) social movement in France for some updates and perspectives.
But first, we’ll be airing audio from another member of the A-Radio as well as Channel Zero Network projects, Dissident Island Radio from London in the U.K., with an interview about the geopolitics of Rojava and leadership within the Kurdish struggle with a comrade participating in the annual ‘Long March‘ in solidarity with Abdullah Öcalan (starts at 14:05). We apologize for the audio quality. We invite you to note the differences of opinion between the anarchists who’ve witnessed, lived in, or fought for the Rojava Revolution, as somewhere within and between their perspectives I believe lies some of the truth of the complex situation there.
Announcements
Happy Birthday Yona Unega (Oso Blanco)
From occupied Cherokee territory in so-called western North Carolina, we’d like to wish a happy birthday on February 26th to wolf clan Cherokee/Choctaw political prisoner, Oso Blanco or, in Cherokee, Yona Unega. Oso is in for armed robberies, where he expropriated from U.S. banks and sent funds to Zapatistas communities in the Yucatan in Mexico. You can write to Oso to write him a happy birthday by addressing letters to his state name:
Byron Chubbuck #07909051 USP Victorville PO BOX 3900 Adelanto, CA 92301
If you’re listening to the radio version, please check out our online/podcast version up at our website for another 20 minutes of interviews plus the Sean Swain segment for this week.
Blue Ridge ABC events
Friday, March 1st is the first Friday of the month and therefore the Trouble Showing at Firestorm Books and Coffee in Asheville, NC. Episode 18, entitled ACAB (for All Cops Are Bastards) airs at 6:30pm and will be followed by a little over an hour of discussion.
Then, on Sunday March 3rd, as the 1st Sunday of the month, BRABC will hold it’s Political Prisoner letter writing event, again at Firestorm. The event begins at 5pm, letter writing materials including stamps, prisoners names and stories, addresses and help in writing. If you’ve never written someone a letter or someone in prison in particular, no worries. It’s a nice social time. The event runs from 5pm to 7:30pm.
Finally, on Saturday, March 16th, Blue Ridge ABC is holding a double-header at Static Age Records in downtown Asheville. First up, from 3-5pm, a Super Smash Brothers benefit tournament, with vegan cheese-steaks and fries available. Double elimination, best 2 out of 3 rounds. For more info, check out https://www.smashprisonssmashbros.eventbrite.com. Then, from 9pm til late at Static Age, get ready for a lineup of anti-fascist metal including Rat Broth, Arid, and Margaret Killjoy’s project Feminazgul, plus more to be announced.
TFSR: This week on the final straw radio, this episode’s theme is anarchist interventions in struggles around the world. We’ll be sharing content from the A-Radio network, which just had its fifth annual gathering in Zurich, Switzerland. The A-Radio network is made up of stations and podcasts from around Europe, plus a smattering in South and North America. We’ve been a member of the A radio network for four years now, which over the last year and a half produces the monthly ‘Bad News: Angry Voices From Around the World’ news podcast in english, made up of contributions from A-Radio member projects. You can find past episodes at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org searching for the term A-Radio Network.
In lieu of this months Bad News, the gathering produced an eight hour radio show last week and elements end up in this broadcast. We’ll be presenting here two episodes from that broadcast, concerning the struggle for autonomy in the social revolutionary region of Rojava in northern Syria, as well as an interview conducted two weeks ago with an anarchist in Paris, France involved in the yellow vest social movement, for some updates and perspectives on that.
But first, we’ll be airing audio from another member of the A-Radio as well as Channel Zero Network projects, Dissident Island from London and the UK, with a review about the geopolitics of Rojava and leadership with the Kurdish struggle with a comrade participating in the annual ‘Long March’ in solidarity with Abdullah Öcalan. We apologize for the audio quality, and we invite you to notice the differences in opinion between the anarchists who have witnessed, lived or fought for the Rojava Revolution, as somewhere within and between their perspectives, I believe, lies some of the truth of this complex situation there.
Dissident Island Radio: Now in our final piece tonight we discuss the ongoing Kurdish struggle and the campaign to free Abdullah Öcalan.
Hi Kawa, thanks for joining us here on the show tonight, do you want to introduce yourself a bit?
Kawa: Yes well I can say that I’m now in a bus in the direction to Strassbourg for the demonstration that will happen tomorrow in solidarity with the Kurdish movement and that I’m taking part of the international Long March and that several people from more than ten countries from different places around Europe are with me right now in this bus going to, uh, Strassbourg.
D*I: Cool and the march stated in Luxembourg, there was a kickoff event in Luxembourg last Sunday?
Kawa: Right, exactly. We start in Luxembourg and have been walking since there. And we have been crossing different villages and places around france and meeting the different Kurdish community and different political groups in different places we go.
D*I: How many people on the march, how many people doing the full kind of distance?
Kawa: Yeah in this march from Luxembourg to Strassbourg we start like around maybe 60-70 people but now we are much more because there was a several marches, there was one started in Germany but German police stopped them and like attacked them and forbid them to continue the demonstration after two days that they were walking. So they decide to stop their march in Germany and join the international march so now we have this, like the international march with like 60-70 people with also this also this other youth march with I dunno, you call it more like atypical that are together. There are also another march that are coming from Switzerland there is also a lot of people that have come to buses for demonstration tomorrow in Stassbourg.
D*I: And this kind of response from local people on the route of the march, what kind of response have you received?
Kawa: Well, uh, especially the Kurdish people is welcoming us, like really happy, really motivated to see so many people in solidarity with the Kurdish people, with the Kurdish struggle because we are also demanding the freedom for Abdullah Öcalan because in fact today 15 of February is 20 years since he was arrested and put in jail, in isolation, and that’s why we are asking us for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan.
D*I: Part of the demand of the march is petitioning the EU to put pressure on Turkey to release Öcalan.
Kawa: Yes, exactly. Um, that’s one of the points and somehow that’s why we’re going to Strassbourg. The European Council is there and also the building of the committee for prevention of torture. Because this is, Öcalan is in complete isolation, they are not allowing him to the lawyers and there are several questions about how is his health situation. The committee for prevention of torture make a short visit one year ago, something like this and they just release a note saying he was alive and he was okay. They never said anything if he was under torture or not, and we don’t know anything about his health situation and we are asking at least if his lawyers can see him, because we don’t know anything about him, he’s in complete isolation for now, today, 20 years.
D*I: And what is the European Union’s position on that, because in the mainstream news we hear a lot about the US, and Turkey, and Russia and Iran, and the roles they are playing in what’s going on in Syria in the moment. But there’s a lot less information about the EU’s position, and what you just said about how the German police stopped the German part of the march from marching altogether, that’s not really a good sign.
Kawa: No, it’s not really a good sign. And we can see how somehow for the European Union, we can see how they [?] with Turkey because somehow Turkey is a NATO country and Europe and the NATO and the US of course and all the countries of NATO keep Turkey close to them because they like being able to do the things that the western countries cannot do in the middle east, that Europe cannot do – Turkey it’s there, and being member of NATO it’s alliance with western powers in middle east. But we can see in the last years [?] Turkey’s turning more close to Russia and to Iran and Europe is trying to also keep Turkey together.
We have also the deal for refugees when Turkey receives at the beginning three thousand millions of Euros and the material of supporting refugees but at the end there is no keeping track of this money and we can see how this money it’s ending in building military bases or like the wall that Turkey build in 2016, a wall that it’s more than 600 km between the border of Turkey and Syria for control the Kurdish people to not cross from Turkey to Syria. And we can see how in Europe the ban on PKK it’s only forcing Kurdish people to have more difficulties to work in solidarity since we can see how Abdullah Öcalan has been the president of the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, and this ban accusing the PKK of terrorist organization is making the things much more difficult. But at the same time, in fact a few months ago there was an initiative in the European Parliament to remove the ban on PKK and at the end at the last sentence on the European Parliament that yes, it’s true, that PKK is never making any kind of terrorist attack or any kind of terrorist actually in Europe. So it’s right that actually we have no reasons for keep them on the terrorist list. But anyway, even saying that, the PKK is still on the terrorist list of the European Union.
D*I: And the whole situation is very confusing for someone on the outside to fully understand because the PKK is not actually in Syria or in Turkey but Öcalan is arrested in Turkey and the US were supporting the YPG/YPJ, the Syrian defense forces, to defeat ISIL in Syria. And they recently announced less than two months ago that they were eventually going to remove their backing and withdraw from Syria and this had caused quite a lot of concern about Turkey is going to do in that northwestern region of Rojava, so do you want to say a bit about what people’s response there has been?
Kawa: Yeah, it’s true there can be a bit complicated because we have a lot of different actors in the same conflict. First for clarify the situation it’s important to understand that when we talk that when we talk about Kurdistan and the Kurdish people, we are talking about, uh, at one time about Turkey but at the same time about Syria, about Iran, about Iraq, and of course over one million of Kurdish people that are in Germany and in other countries all around the world. It’s a lot of actors at the same time, so when we see the situation in Rojava right now we can see that since 2012 there is this social revolution that is happened there where there Kurdish people in the north of Syria start to manage society outside the frame of nation-state.
So it’s interesting to see how the Kurdish liberation movement was born with a frame of national liberation movement in the frame of building a Kurdish state but the beginning of the 2000s they reformulate the political project and they make this step, uh, this step that they call Democratic Confederalist pushing for a society that is based on values of the women’s liberation, ecology, and direct democracy without a state. So we can see how since the autonomy of Rojava in 2012 they are building this society based on these ideas, we can see how in Turkey the Kurdish people in the southeast of Turkey they were also building this autonomy, a system based on Democratic Confederalist, but the Turkish state completely attacked them and in 2015 they start a lot of military operations destroying a lot of cities. Cities like Nusaybin were completely destroyed by the Turkish army. It’s important to see that now the army wants to enter the north of Syria but it’s not something new, like the war from the Turkish state against the Kurdish people have been for a lot of years. In the 90’s there was a huge war.
Now Turkey wants to attack the Kurds in Syria but of course Syria means to cross a border so it means that still Turkey is a county that’s part of NATO. And of course like Russia that’s a country that has been supporting more the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and can put objections if Turkey wants to enter Syria, so that’s why there have been so many objections and diplomatic interactions with so many different actors and Turkey’s getting closer and closer to Russia in order to have green light from Russia in order to allow them to attack the Kurds in northern Syria and Rojava. So we can see since how the announcement of Donald Trump in December 15th that they withdraw from Syria they start to withdraw the diplomatic body of US in Syria, some soldiers are still remainin there. And these has been presented for Erdogan as an example of how Donald Trump is ready to withdraw from Syria for allowing Turkey to enter there. After that there was some contradiction messages, it’s not clear, if the US will allow Turkey to fully enter the north of Syria with bombs and airplanes and drones like they did in Afrin one year ago. Or if they will stop Turkey to use planes, though it’s a discussion ongoing you can see how Turkey is now also talking with Iran, Russia in these international meetings that they are having after the process of Astana. And it’s a really complicated situation with a lot of different actors that it’s sometimes different to follow maybe.
D*I: And how does it feel to be a part of that actually? Because it’s one thing to attempt to build an alternative community structure that’s really quite large – the region that it’s covering is not insignificant, there’s many many small communes that make up this region of north Syria – so how does it feel to be a part of that, to try and build that, and at the same time be so incredibly vulnerable to all of these international geopolitical movements over which you have absolutely no influence, no control, no ability, you’re just completely vulnerable in that situation?
Kawa: Yeah, and this vulnerability, it’s really interesting point though because we can see the hegemony of the model of the nation-state succeed in taking over the world. And since the Kurdish movement is northeast Syria they are developing a society outside the frame of nation-states, the threat of nation-states is always there. And we can especially how Daesh, the ISIS, the Islamic State start try to create their own system also outside the frame and in opposition to that, and of course the Kurdish people were in the need to defend themselves. And that’s what allow them to also allow them to take so much territory because the threat of the Islamic State and the terror society that they were implementing on to all the people were a direct war and somehow the Kurds were saying “We’re defending ourselves and we are fighting also, not fighting Daesh because we want to fight them. It’s just because this is a threat for humanity, this is a pure fascist system. So it’s an antifascist struggle and we need to defeat them.”
And since all this war against the islamic state, a lot of different territories that have been liberated from the caliphate have been joining to the Autonomous Administration that the Kurds started in the north. When I went to Rojava and I had the opportunity to view for one year how this society’s working for one year interesting to see how they are succeeding in developing a system outside the frame of the nation-state with the women’s liberation as a main point of this social transformation but uh, of course, all the states that are surrounding this territory don’t recognize Rojava as something that they can fear[?}. There is a problem that when the situation of war came, it’s really difficult to defend yourself from an army like Turkey, that it’s a member of NATO with warplanes, drones, like full technology of NATO. And of course, no one will ever sell of give anti-aircraft weapons to Rojava because they are not an actor that can be recognized as a state and they don’t want to be so, uh, somehow it’s a really complicated situation and we can see how all these structure of capitalism and the connection of capitalism with, uh, the weapon industry it’s creating a system which is not allowing other projects outside the frame of nation-state to exist because there is this military frontier that you can’t go and we saw it in Afrin one year ago when was the division of Afrin and it was really clear that the military technology was creating a border that you can’t overcome.
D*I: And I think that something that Rojava has shown us over the past year is just how difficult the creation of an alternative way of structuring society really is. I mean we had some of this experience with seeing what was going on in Latin America some years ago but I guess Rojava is the most recent example of this, and it’s been really impressive to see people actually putting their own lives on the line and going out and fighting the powers that are trying to stop them from existing. Has that the willingness to fight and the demands that fighting has made on that society, like has it had an impact on the communes and the way that they’re organized or has it has any effect in that way?
Kawa: Of course it have effect but I think it’s important to understand the Kurdish people they are used to live outside the frame of nation-state. We can see how in a lot of the structures in the system of communes that they are developing, it may sound like something new for us but for them it’s nothing that it’s completely new. They have been living in this system from, like, forever. So it’s important to see that this process that they are doing it’s without states because they have the knowledge of how the state and it’s important to see how at some point the communes are able to exist now because Daesh has been defeated so a lot of places before the communes was the war. And the war was the thing that was more necessary, so we can see how not only the Kurdish people from Rojava but the Kurdish people from all around Kurdistan came to the northern Syria to fight against the Islamic state because they know that the Kurds are their brothers and their sisters and every step and every city that was liberated, the Kurdish people was able to go back to their cities and then they realized that they were able to win the war so they were able to bring this system of Democratic Confederalist to the maximum example. So before they were already somehow living in a communal way, building up communes, but the point is that now the Syrian state left because they were not able to fight the Islamic State and now they are self-managing all the parts of society. They succeed in creating a self-managed system of justice, a self-managed system of economy based on cooperatives. So they are in a full way of managing all the aspects of life, all the aspects of society outside the frame of nation-state. And of course for the communes it has a huge impact, this war, as they know they can exist and they have the life that they have today because the war that they did and they always remember all the people that has been fighting and all the people that has died.
D*I: And what was it like to be an international there, what does it feel like to go there as an international person?
Kawa: Well, it’s a really interesting experience. We can see how a lot of people already went there as internationalists, especially since 2014-15 a lot of people started to join more in the military side, in the fight against the Islamic State. But since the war against Islamic State was able to take more land and to liberate more territories this society system that they are building is attracting more and more the attention of internationals. So I was one of these internationals that went there in the civilian side, I was traveling there for see the society, for see what means to build the revolution, what means to build a society without a state, what means to build this system of Democratic Confederalism that they are building. And for me I can say that I was really impressed for see a lot of things that seems impossible to be, but at the same time it’s a really hard situation so we’re just fighting a war that means a lot of people and a lot of resources needs to focus on this war and it’s really important to see how this situation there it’s really hard. But what they are building it’s something that can bring a lot of inspiration in order to develop new ways of thinking and understanding the society that can allow the humanity to think beyond the nation-state, beyond capitalism, beyond patriarchy and try to bring new ideas and new hopes to the revolutionary movements all around the world. Like, we saw in the ‘90s with the Zapatistas movement that was giving inspiration to a lot of movements, a lot of revolutionary organizations. We can see how this is happening in Rojava and to be able to be there and to see not only the nice parts and all the beautiful things that you can see but also the difficulties, the sacrifices, and all the problems that they are facing. It’s giving perspective for how we can also start to develop a revolutionary movements all around the world in our countries because somehow if we go there as internationalists it’s not just for going there to see the situation in Rojava, we are also going there for learn, for understand their movement, how they succeed on doing this revolution and then bringing these ideas back home and being able to develop an internationalist movement. We can develop a revolution all around the world.
For me also I’m from Catalonia, so the impact of the international brigades that came in Spain in 1936 at least more than 50,000 peoples from different countries fighting fascism together, um, it had a huge impact. So now we can see how fascism is affecting Rojava, is attacking the people in northern Syria. So it’s important also to have this in mind and to see that internationalist is not something that is in the books of history, it’s something that is it’s happening right now. So we can see internationalists from all around the world are going there to learn, to support and for fight to defend this revolution.
D*I: You said that the march that you’re doing right now is calling for the EU to put pressure on Turkey to release Öcalan. So I have a slightly perhaps controversial question. How important is Öcalan to the movement, is it necessary that there is a leader in the movement or is it more of a kind of solidarity support for an arrested comrade? What’s the dynamic there?
Kawa: It’s a good question, and especially for anarchist people who have been interested in the stateless society that they are building it’s sometimes a bit contradictory, no? This focus on the leader. But it’s important to understand when Abdullah Öcalan started this movement he was always trying to give perspectives on developing revolutionary line in this movement and of course he has been respected for all the perspective and all the ideological background. He’s a person that was writing a lot of books and was giving a lot of political perspectives because he had been studying a lot of different revolutions, different movements. And the point is that he did not it alone, so he was always pushing for education, for studying, for learning together. So the threat of catching him and putting him in jail when Turkey was making the trial they condemn him to seven death penalties but somehow Europe and the western powers was putting pressure for make the Turkey cannot execute him and they have been keeping him in complete isolation in this jail so it’s important to see also how he’s in jail and he’s not able to push for the revolutionary struggle in a practical way, he has been using this time to read a lot and to develop this frame of Democratic Confederalism. So it’s important to see Öcalan not only as the political or military leader but also as one that brings the ideological perspectives, all the ideas of Democratic Confederalism that are summarized in this Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization that is this five books that he wrote from prison, are the books that are presenting this model of Democratic Confederalist that somehow we can see that is a synthesis of all the things that he was reading and all the things also that he was experiencing when he was in the guerrilla movement, in this revolutionary movements. So when read these ideas of Democratic Confederalist we can see influence from all this Marxist background that this movement have, but of course also we can see a lot of influences from different authors. He’s even quoting Bakunin in some books, Sylvia Federici so a lot of different thinkers that are giving perspectives so he’s the one who made the synthesis and for this the Kurdish people it’s really know how he put a lot of effort on giving a perspective for a solution not only for Kurdistan but for middle east and all the world, making this synthesis of other revolutionary movements.
And for this it’s also important to understand the reality in Middle East. Like, middle east has been a place where the oppression and all the attacks of the colonialism has been really strong and we can see how one hundred years ago after the first world war the western powers went there and started to build the nation-states and the dynamics on middle east are not fitting with this system of nation-state, and they are keeping with the system of tribes and different clans so for them this point of the leadership is something that’s really rooted in the society. That of course, from a western view can be difficult to understand and to give meaning. And I think that even for me, before to go there, it was sometimes difficult to understand. But there you can see how this kind of leadership is bringing unity in order to face the enemy so somehow also the point that he’s in isolation as a political prisoner it’s also increasing the solidarity for all the people but it’s not only him, there are thousands of Kurdish peoples in jails, especially in Turkey, that they are also developing a huge movement of resistance in jails, an anti-jail movement. But of course he as the leader of these revolutionary movement have a special importance for the Kurdish people.
D*I: So there was a very interesting and really quite brutal critique a few years ago released by the anarchist federation, of Öcalan, comparing him to Gadaffi and Gadaffi’s pre-dictatorship politics, and then what actually transpired. And I wondered if recognizing kind of the brutality of the geopolitical dynamics that are going on with all of these nation-states fighting for different reasons over this territory, and then also within the wider region of Kurdistan, how many different smaller groups exist that are all toeing not exactly the same line, which is positive in some way and also the ability of a leader to unite these people. Having been there, do you feel that there is structural resilience within what you’ve seen, within the structure of the communes against a kind of re-hash of a kind of Gadaffi situation, of a leader coming in and then eventually capitulating under these geopolitical dynamics and having to force a dictatorship through, like is there a resilience to that happening.
Kawa: Yes, for sure, the implementation of Democratic Confederalism it’s really interesting to see how they are pushing a lot for the development of the communes, how they are really creating systems for avoid any kind of centralization of powers. For example they are building different committees for take care of different things, and for example in Rojava there is one big city, Qamişlo, somehow it’s the biggest city in Rojava and they are putting a lot of effort toward these committees, like for culture or economy and to avoid to put the central place of these kind of institutions in Qamişlo and to decentralize completely them. Somehow they have a huge analysis on the society and the nation-state and what they are understanding is that nation-state it’s the main power of centralization, of homogenization, of control. So in order to avoid a dictatorship, in order to avoid a fascism to happen, the most important thing is to decentralize the power, to decentralize the society for allow anyone to be autonomous and in the commune system it’s exactly this, they are trying to give power to every commune that they can solve their problems but they understand that the situation it’s complicated, so that somehow it’s important that still keeping some structures, and some institutions where these communes can go if they face problems. So the idea is that the commune is able to solve all their problems and all their needs in the life, but in case they are facing problems that they cannot, they are making coordinations in a district level, in a province level, in order to be able to support all these communes.
So we can see how is this system of power is bottom up and it’s important to see that some kind of central institutions have this mentality of like, serving the people, you know like the Zapatistas were saying, a place where the people rule and the government obeys. So they are creating central institutions because of the needs of some dealing with some things, especially with the military situation, with the war. But they are trying to reinforce these experiences of the direct democracy the communes are giving to the people. But of course you cannot change from one system to another in one night, it needs time, it means that the people needs what means direct democracy, what means to manage their own life in all the levels. So for this they are seeing the history also as a process, so they want to push for this society, for direct democracy but they know that managing a society of like four million people, five million people that are living now in Rojava it’s not something easy. So they are trying to develop different institutions that ensure that this revolution is able to defend itself because this is one of the main points of this movement, self defense. They understand how all the living beings need to be able to defend themself in order to survive. So they are trying to push also for all the communities to have their own self-defense system. And I think this is the main structure you can have in order to avoid fascism, when you have a centralization of power to control the others, if you decentralize the ability of self defense, this cannot happen because any kind of commune can see that ‘hey, this is not going in the line that we want with the society so we cannot allow this to control other things.’ So this point of develop self defense in any commune, I think it’s one of the best ways to ensure that dictatorship will not be ever possible there.
D*I: Thank you very much Kawa for taking the time to discuss with us these crazy complexities of an actual real-world attempt to live without a state. So if people want to support the struggle in general, how can they get in touch, where should they go what’s the points of contact and information?
D*I: Cool, thank you very much and I hope it’s successful
Kawa: It has been a pleasure, thank you a lot for this time and I’ve been happy to talk with you.
TFSR: You’re listening the Final Straw Radio and I’m Bursts O’Goodness.
And I’m William Goodenough.
You just heard Dissident Island Radio’s interview about Kurdish solidarity and the struggle in Rojava. Next up is an interview by comrades from Črna Luknja on Radio Student in Ljubljana, Slovenia with an anarchist fighter in the militia Anarchist Stuggle, a signatory to the International Freedom Battalion.
A-Radio Network Announcers: We’re back in the studio in Turic, so it’s been quite a start, this fifth radio live anarchist broadcast from the gathering of different anarchist and antiauthoritarian radios. We know that in capitalist society class struggle is never far away so battlefields are opening up everywhere, so we will have also on today’s show some reports from France about Gilet Jaunes movement, we will hear from London by our correspondents from Dissident Island and we begin this section of the show with that other ever important struggle that has lightened up all sort of revolutionary imagination of many around the world and of course, Rojava. Territory in Syria that wasn’t widely known a couple of years ago but due to the actions of different political and even military forces and due to the revolutionary efforts of movements there, Rojava somehow became for us in Europe something, a recognizable entity for some fantasy, for others unfulfilled expectation, etc etc. So we will try to also add some more information, some analysis, some reflection to the understanding of ongoing struggles in and around Rojava so for today we will hear two pieces, two interviews.
So first one is an interview conducted by Črna Luknja with a fighter directly from Rojava. So the interview is a couple of weeks old, it deals with the latest geopolitical changes on the terrain that are connected with the recent announcement of the US president that USA would withdraw its military forces and then the other interview that will follow the first is also lets say, tries to critically engage with the common narratives around Rojava Revolution. So it will be an interview with a comrade from Kurdish Anarchist Forum and we should also add a technical remark that the interview was originally conducted in a language other than english, but for this purpose it was translated and then re-enacted. So, yeah. The content of the interview is true to the original even if the voices that you will hear do not belong to the people that were interviewed. So this Rojava slot will take maybe the next 25 minutes of the broadcast, so stay tuned, and inform yourself about the struggles and get ready to open up some battlefields also closer to home.
Črna Luknja: Rojava from Tekoşina Anarşişt, Anarchist Struggle collective that was established in autumn 2017 and just recently announced its military presence in Rojava. They are also participating in the International Freedom Battalion. For the beginning can you present yourself, anarchist collective and International Freedom Battalion.
Tekoşina Anarşişt Member: We’ve been in Rojava – I mean a lot of us have been in Rojava for a longer duration, a long period of time – but our collective was established in autumn of 2017 and we didn’t really want to become like a public, propaganda oriented collective. That was never our interest, we were more focused on doing, you know, material work in terms of going to the front and also engaging with the movement here. We decided to go public simply because of the impending Turkish threat, so everyone right now is kind of, you know, attempting to rally their base and our base is obviously anarchists. So we decided to go public because of that, as well as to some extent we were forced to go public because of the IBF formation, because we are a signing member of the IFB. And I don’t want to speak very much about IFB because they have not made their announcement yet and we prematurely mentioned their formation and we’ve received criticism for this. I don’t want to speak about the IFB very much until the formation has made itself public.
ČL: So it would be very interesting to get some news from within Rojava, what is current political situation there.
TA: I guess I’ll touch a little bit on the Turkey situation. Information here is difficult to come by, to some extent, so a lot of the stuff that we are made aware of actually comes from the internet as well, just following Syria Livemap and stuff like that. Obviously, we are, there has been two particular situations where based upon Erdogan’s threats that we believe that there was gonna be some sort of massive invasion of Rojava, so we’re obviously getting prepared for that, if that is a reality, if that’s going to happen. Things have a little bit seemed to kind of have calmed down but obviously that is a very tangible reality and something that could happen at any given moment so that we need to be prepared for.
ČL: Maybe you can predict some possible scenarios for the future.
TA: Yeah, I mean obviously Rojava and the PYD have been in negotiations with the regime for quite some time now, so hopefully they’re able to come to some sort of agreement. And I say ‘hopefully’ – obviously as anarchists we are not supportive of the Assad regime, we’re not supportive of any regime or any state, etc. – but in terms of survival it’s kind of the only way, as far as I see it, or we see it, in terms of being able to maintain some element of the revolution here. And in terms of scenarios of outcomes, if there is no deal with the regime I think it’ll be a very difficult situation for them to be in simply because not only will they then have to deal with Turkey but they’ll have to deal with attacks from the regime. So it’s a kind of indefensible position to be in if they don’t cut some sort of deal. I don’t want to say any sort of my predictions about the future of Rojava or anything like that. After Trump decided that he’s just gonna pull out of Syria, just, you know, I’ve kind of given up on making predictions because we’re dealing with irrational actors here. You know Erdogan is not necessarily a rational actor and Trump is definitely not a rational actor so it’s very difficult to make accurate predictions, what’s going to transpire here.
ČL: I don’t know how much you are able to be in contact with the society, how is in general the situation, how is living for the population there?
TA: The good thing is that we are able to have contact with people from like the general population, in fact we have a good friend of ours who is Assyrian, he speaks perfect English and he learned it primarily through American hip-hip which is a kind of interesting thing. And he’s given us a little but of light into more of the civilian population here. I mean, a lot of people are obviously incredibly supportive of like the YPG, the QSD [SDF], YPJ, etc. But a lot of people, especially people who are not Kurdish, are not aware of exactly what’s happening, you know, because it’s a very complicated situation. They’ve had al-Nusra come through, they’ve had ISIS come through, they’ve had different groups and a lot of people aren’t actually incredibly familiar with what you know, YPG, YPJ, the revolution, etc. is but they view it very favorably for sure. I mean, when you have something like ISIS, like al-Nusra or TFSA or something like that, you know obviously people are going to prefer the alternatives. Personally I think that there is a lot of education and communication that needs to happen with the population here simply because they don’t know what is going on, or why internationals are here. They kind of want to go back to their normal life, they don’t want this war to be happening. They really just want security.
ČL: How can people support your struggle and where can they find more information?
TA: So in terms of supporting the struggle at some point we’ll figure out how to properly how to get donations and figure that all out online. So that will be posted. We also very much need medical supplies, that’s one of the projects that we’re trying to work on right now is having competent combat medics. It’s something that’s very very needed here and the medical supplies are quite lacking so, you know, if people can donate things like chest seals, tourniquets, hemistatic dressing, a lot of these kinds of things are very much needed. In terms of finding more information, we’re really kind of starting to be public as I had said previously. So things are kind of going to come out over time, so I guess if you want to follow our twitter that’s the primary place that we will be posting everything. We’ve posted our involvement in Der ez-Zour, today we’ll post about the anniversary of Afrin and the actions that our people took in that. So, yeah, I guess follow our twitter for more information.
ČL: Okay, do you want to add something maybe?
TA: Obviously in Afrin there is consistently examples of people being kidnapped, people being sexually assaulted, people being murdered by the TFSA. There is ethnic cleansing happening in Afrin and if this continues, if the Turkish army is allowed to come in to Rojava the exact same thing is going to be happening. We have to dispel this narrative that, like, Turkey is fighting ISIS. Turkey has never fought ISIS, they never considered ISIS to be a threat when they were on their border. So with the Americans pulling out, with the defeat of ISIS, etc, is the trying time for Rojava. As I stated earlier, we cannot let what happened in Afrin happen to the rest of Rojava. The people in Rojava are living a decent life, a good life, and a safe life, comparatively. So I guess in summation what I want to say is that we need to be supporting Rojava right now, we need to be supporting the people of Rojava. We cannot let this just drift out of the 24-hour news cycle as some tragedy that’s happening somewhere else in the world that doesn’t effect us. This is an incredibly important thing and the Rojava project has provided people with a good life, with a safe life, within the Syrian civil war. So we cannot let them be betrayed, we cannot turn our backs on the Kurds, we cannot turn our backs on the Arabs here, we cannot turn our backs on the Assyrians, the Armenians, etc. We need to stand up for Rojava now.
TFSR: You’re listening the Final Straw Radio and I’m Bursts O’Goodness.
And I’m William Goodenuff.
You just heard Črna Luknja’s interview with an anarchist fighter with the militia Anarchist Struggle, which is a signatory to the International Freedom Battalion, just back from Rojava. Next up we’ll hear from the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum with Zahir Bahir, an Iraqi Kurd living in London.
ARN: Dear [?] thank you for your time, would you shortly introduce yourself. Where are your from, where do you live and what is your connection to the Rojava revolution?
Zahir Bahir: I am Zahir Bahir, originally from Iraq. I am part of Kurdistan Anarchist Forum and part different anarchist groups in London, among others Rebel City. I am also engaged in writing and translation, and as I am retired I am now a full-time activist.
ARN: Let us talk about Rojava. When have you last been there and what was your general impression?
ZB: Well, in respect to Rojava, basically I am part of the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum. We believe in building local groups and changing the society from the bottom and not from the top. At the time I was really excited, I had a close friend who worked at the PKK media and he interviewed me in 2013 for one and a half hours about the local groups. Then they interviewed me again in Brussels and we arranged a journey afterwards to Rojava. I went in May 2014 with a friend of mine. As I was the first one, they were very concerned that the news were spread. I had all the freedom to speak and see whomever I wanted. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. I went to all the meetings, to the communes, etc. I met the top of the people of the PYD and the movement for a democratic society and also from the bottom. I also went to events then. When I came back I wrote a big report in English and Kurdish. However, when I came back the anarchist book fair took place and the comrades organized a meeting at the anarchist and socialist movement. In 2016, I wanted to go back to Rojava to feel the difference between 2014 and 2016 with a French comrade. We tried to organize the border crossing but there was a blockade by the KDP of Barzani. In the end we had to come back. Last year I went back to Kurdistan for one and a half months but I refused to go to Rojava, as then I was supposed to follow the plan of the authorities, and to be honest at the moment it is very difficult to write news about Rojava. Many people went and came back, but they usually went as academics or as a delegation and they usually stay a week or a bit more, and whatever they see was organized for them. They don’t really see or talk to the ordinary people. There are exceptions, but only a few.
ARN: What can you tell us about the political situation now?
ZB: It is very complex and it can change week by week. There are so many forces there, which makes it difficult to have a proper analysis. But one thing is very clear: when I was there, the situation is completely different from now. At the time, there were three powers: the movement for a democratic society, the self-administration, and the PYD. There was a balance between them. Today, the PYD is the dominant actor. At the time, the YPJ was a voluntary force. It is very difficult to properly analyze the development, because I wasn’t there all the time. What I saw so far is that many people don’t realize what would be there to criticize. However, a few things are clear. At least we can say some things about how Rojava is changing. There was a change in voluntary forces or forces that belong to the community. Now, they are a PYD force and are not any more a defender but became an attacker. All this actually happened because of the fight against ISIS. When they attacked Kobani, there was a good moment for the US to get involved in order to control the movement. The best way was to get involved in Kobani side by side with the PYD and YPG. By the strategic change from a defense to an offensive force, they, the PYD and the YPG, needed more weapons, more tanks and more hospitals, more food, more clothes, a lot of things. That’s why a guerrilla force or any movement which has an army cannot do much until they are supported by an original or international power if they are acting offensively. YPG completely became dependent on the US, which tried to increase its influence.
ARN: You have published many articles about the developments in Rojava. What are your most important points about the situation on the ground?
ZB: The situation is continuously changing. What I thought last year was that there was time to resolve the Kurdish issue in the region. There was no guarantee if Assad is winning the battle and if he’ll negotiate or or if he’ll attack. I said if Assad is defeated in Idlib, then the Turkish state will overrun the Kurdish people. However, US and Trump don’t want their power and forces staying there and of course it is important to talk about the interests of the Turkish state and Erdogan. There is no way for any state to support the Kurdish people in expense of their relationship to Turkey. This is one thing. The second thing is one with which a vast majority of Kurdish intellectuals disagree with me, but I can always say that Erdogan is a very clever political that knows how to play. He plays with Russia, with ISIS and with the KRG. He even managed to involve the PKK in a peace process, but now the situation in Rojava and Bakur is getting worse. At the moment there is heavy fighting between the last ISIS groups and the Syrian Democratic forces in Dier ez-Zor. For me it was important that PYD would not get involved so much in the fight against ISIS. This wasn’t a Kurdish war due to many reasons. One of them is that Turkey was exporting his own interior crisis into Northern Syria. This was one reason. Another important thing to talk about is the embargo. Democratic Confederalism is a big task for many, many people. Not only for cadre or PYD or a small minority. In order to achieve that we need an enormous revolution, in education, economic, ecological and other spheres. So ignoring the cultural and political revolution was and is a threat to successful societal change. This is also connected with the embargo. As soon as the money starts to flow and if the sanctions were lifted, this will influence the situation and is a threat to solidarity. If there wouldn’t have been sanctions, Rojava could have been defeated a long time ago.
ARN: One of your main arguments is the gap between the theory of Democratic Confederalism and it’s practical outcome in northern Syria. Could you say a few words about that?
ZB: In my article ‘Confederalism,’ I argue that Bookchin and Öcalan don’t have many differences in their definition of Confederalism. They’re only minor differences. Basically, Bookchin extends his idea to feminism, but Öcalan goes beyond that and extends it to a feminist movement. In addition, Bookchin never believed that a political party can achieve Democratic Confederallism by itself, but in Rojava at the moment it is mainly the PYD that is trying to install and achieve Democratic Confederalism. Bookchin believed in decentralization, and according to what I know, and according to people who went to Rojava it is not exactly Democratic Confederalism that is happening there, as it is mainly executed and organized by political parties. If you give power to political parties to the PYD, you give it to an organization with hierarchy. None of their decisions like cooperating with the US or negotiations with the Kurdish opposition were based on debate with people, but based on decisions made by a tiny minority within the PYD and probably in accordance with PKK cadres. This kind of things, if you look at the connection to the US and the hierarchical organization and the focus on fighting, this is done on the expenses of the commune and the communal organization. This is the opposite direction of Democratic Confederalism. I think PYD and PKK, both of them are somehow counteracting Öcalan’s ideas. His ideas are very clear when it comes to Democratic Confederalism. As many people attack us, we will defend ourselves but we will not attack.
ARN:Nonetheless, there is some sort of emancipation happening. Where do you see the most emancipatory elements within the current development?
ZB: Before I come to the positive point, I’d to point out that if they get defeated it will take a long time to emerge again. In my opinion, this will leave a very bad picture for the people. In the end this will cause a lot of problems and the idea of Democratic Confederalism and the movement as such will be damaged. Regardless of what happened, the movement in general is good. They are supporting the building and emergence of local groups. This is what we are trying to do in Başur, and what is at the core of anarchist ideas. That is one thing. Another thing is the empowerment of individuals. The third thing is the emergence of the women’s movement. The women’s issues were, and are promoted. It took quite a lot in order to develop and support the women’s role. If you are comparing KRG and Rojava, in the KRG women’s issues have women in the past 27 years rather than decreased. Men are in power. When it comes to Rojava, there is a fourth positive point: the ecological issue. It’s important and a direct reference to Öcalan. They have done very little work to ecology, but in fact even if there is only information spread, it’s important. We cannot work towards an ecological society if we are in war. But they still did it and that’s impressive. The fifth positive point is that they make the people live together. Muslims, Christians, Yezidis, etc. That was a big step because still many people at many places are fighting each other based on ethnics, religion and other identitarian reasons. In Rojava, they seperated religion from the power. They made religion a religion s personal issue, and separated from the political area. They don’t force people not to have a religion, but created another way of decision making in this regard.
ARN: What’s your point of view about Democratic Confederalism from an anarchist perspective?
ZB: It’s a big issue, basically. I don’t think that anybody’s definition’s as good as Bookchin’s. I completely agree with Bookchin. I think there are many important things within his concept. One of them is the argument against the nation-state. It’s not only for the working class, but it’s for all the people. Everyone is building up the confederal society. In Bookchin’s eyes, we have to democratize the municipality and regard the municipality as the alternative to the nation-state. He calls this alternative ‘libertarian municipalism’ and regards it as the possibility to achieve a socialist society. In this regard, Öcalan and Bookchin agree with one difference. Bookchin called it ‘libertarian municipals’ and Öcalan called the units ‘people’s houses’. People’s houses are an assembly of the people, these assemblies contain representatives of the groups. In practice, people’s houses are representing local groups. But in the case of Rojava, it seems that people that are on top of the People’s Houses are always the same ones. Bookchin wants everyone to get involved, and everyone to be entitled to get involved, even though he did not believe in consensus within big groups. But he never believed in a leader. He constructed a concept where people can be replaced at any time. For Bookchin, everything has to rotate and people have to change in order to prevent hierarchy and power structures. And I just want to add something, I think that in Rojava it seems to me now that putting decisions into practice is made by the same body that is taken the decision. But it should never be one body, the decision maker and the decision implementor. A decision should always be made by the vast majority of people. In this regard, Bookchin was very clear about Confederalism. What he said was that Confederalism was only administrative. The members of assemblies need to be empowered to participate in direct action and direct democracy. Members of higher bodies should be strictly mandated to be in an assembly or in a group, they should only be chosen to administrate and coordinate the politics that have been shaped by the assembly itself. It’s never ever thought to be a fixed system of representation.
ARN: You called for critical solidarity. What do you mean exactly by that, especially regarding the current threats for the people and the federation?
ZB: Well, in my opinion anarchists do not believe that anything is perfect. That is the beauty of anarchism; even any idea from an anarchist movement should be regarded critically. Even anarchist ideas should be regarded with critical solidarity. I wrote an article about why we anarchists are divided about Rojava, and in fact anarchists are divided. Some regard Rojava as the project of PKK. They reject it as they believe PKK and Öcalan didn’t change. On the other side there are people just supporting it without criticizing, and this is wrong. There is movement, no group that should not be criticized. Criticism is at the core of anarchist actions and ideas. If you isolate criticism from anarchism, you isolate anarchism from a core characteristic. The third part are people like me, supporting Rojava critically. If we support it we can see what’s going on and wrong with the movement and how we can or want to tackle the problem. It cannot be good to only criticize Rojava. I believe that every movement has good and bad things. We need to promote the good, and reject the bad. Referring to the positive points I mentioned, we need to promote these points. At the same time there are negative points we should not support. What’s important for anarchist comrades is not to just support the movement, but also to criticize it on the basis of our ideas. It is not right to align with the US or the UK, it’s wrong to line up with them, it’s wrong how the town meetings are shaped and how influential cadres are. This is why we need to offer both criticism and solidarity.
TFSR: You’re listening the Final Straw Radio and I’m Bursts O’Goodness.
And I’m William Goodenuff. You’ve just heard a translated interview with Zahir Bahir of the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum in London about Rojava and changes she’s seen there, and what might be termed a shift from a social revolution to a political revolution. Finally, we’re about to hear an interview with an anarchist living in Paris, France about engagement with the Yellow Vest movement. This was recorded and broadcast as part of the 2019 A-Radio gathering live broadcast in mid-February.
ARN: Yeah, so you’re still listening to the fifth international radio broadcast from the anarchist and anti-authoritarian radios. Now, this morning we made a short telephone interview with somebody from Paris about the Yellow Vest movement and you’re going to hear it now.
Rebel Girl: Can you introduce yourself and give us a little background on the Yellow Vest movement?
Anarchist In Paris: I’m an anarchist living in Paris, France and since the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement have been taking part of several actions throughout different cities of France as well as writing articles about what is going on here for US comrades. Um, so the Yellow Vest movement started exactly three months ago on November 17th. It started as a grassroots response to the government’s proposal of increasing taxes on fuels for supposedly ecological purposes. Um, then, people realized that this increase of taxes will worsen their living situation. Therefor they decided to oppose the government’s decision. It is important to remember that the same government before wanted to increase taxes on fuels, this idea at the beginning of 2016 to clearly stop taxing the ultra rich. And so by these two kind of decisions, one of like reducing taxes for the ultra rich and increasing taxes on fuels for people who are constantly dependent on their cars, this created the spark that put people out in the streets. And so since November 17th every single week people decided to get organized wherever they were living, that is to say some people decided to gather during major demonstration in major cities in France. Or simply blocking traffic circles. The Yellow Vest movement was supposedly apolitical, leaderless and decentralized at first. And I think that it’s important to notice that instead of talking about the Yellow Vest movement as whole unit, it’s important to approach it as several movements with their own characteristic strategies and specificities depending on the geographical area we are studying. So yeah, for like the little background of the Yellow Vest movement that’s what I have right now. Of course, the movement had like different stages. For example the beginning of it led to a major riot, like in Paris at the Champs-Eleysess there have been like huge riots in the three first weeks of the movement. Then by mid-December it seems like the movement was reaching some kind of plateau with the Christmas holidays approaching, but a lot of us were afraid that it would end up dying after the Christmas holidays. But surprisingly in 2019 it started all over again and until today there are still people in the streets.
RG: Yeah, so I didn’t know if you would want to to talk a little more about what’s going on now and how it has changed or where you think it’s going to go.
AIP: Okay, so like about what is going on now, um, it’s a bit difficult to know. Yesterday there were major national day of action and in Paris there have been some clashed with police forces as usual and about 5,000 people took the streets, which is kind of like massive compared to the previous week. So clearly there are still people willing to be in the streets fighting for their living situations against the government. And this didn’t also just happen in Paris but there was also demonstration in Rouen, Toulouse, Leon, so it was really like a national call again. But what is going on now, it’s difficult. In the sense that people are still gathering in the streets, people are still upset but there’s feeling we are clearly reaching another kind of plateau, according to me.
RG: Yeah, if you want to talk about maybe a little bit all the different forces that have been at play, what’s been inspiring or problematic.
AIP: Uh, so, I think what is important to remember what is inspiring first to the movement is that it’s been lasting for three months and this is something that is quite rare and we should acknowledge it because the government tried on several occasions to pacify the situations by making concessions, by trying open dialogue with some forces among the movement. But besides all this attempts of pacifying the situation and turning the pages of the Yellow Vest movement, the movement is still in the streets, people are still angry, upset, and part of the die-hard participants refuse complete dialogue with the government and have lost all trust in politicians and the system itself. So I think that’s something first really inspiring because it’s quite rare that among our circles or even among social movements there is like, this capacity of lasting so long and refusing any form of dialogue. Another inspiring fact is that the movement started as a grassroots response without any traditional political framework in the sense that usually France, when there is like a social movement, there is always like a call made by trade unions or traditional leftist parties to start a social movement or a demonstration, and for the first time it’s just like people in the streets that gathered and were brought together because of shared frustrations and that refuse any form of like political parties or political trade unions became part of it. So they really started from just common people deciding to gather by their own means and organize by their own means, so there’s like a really interesting aspect in this.
Because we can clearly see some links between our ways of organizing as anarchists and the way the movement started in a sense, with the ideas of being leaderless, decentralized and a horizontal platform. So that’s the things that are inspiring but there’s also a lot of problems within the movement. First, of course, it’s the apolitical stance that the movement decided to embrace from the beginning. And this apolitical stance allowed a lot of like, reactionary tendencies to use the movement as a platform for their own ideas and actions. Since the beginning of the movement there have been a lot of issues with fascist groups taking part in the movement and fighting alongside anarchists and other demonstrators. There have been a lot of problem with conspiracy like discourse, misogynist discourse, racist discourse, anti-Semitic discourse, nationalistic discourse too. So that’s a major problem and it still remain a problem nowadays. That is to say just yesterday in the Parisian demonstration fascists were there too, but luckily, which is inspiring the group of 20 fascists or so got kicked out by yellow vesters and radials. So even if they are still taking part in demonstration there is at least an answer from part of the demonstration to clearly chase them out of the actions. So that’s also something that we need to keep working on, to continue making the movement somehow unwelcoming for those groups of individuals which is extremely difficult. Because only three weeks ago fascists were super organized in Paris and attacked two weeks in a row an anti-racist block that was within the Yellow Vest movement. So right now we have a second front within the movement that leads to a lot of street flights between anti-racists and facsists. So that’s still problematic.
Something that is also really problematic among the movement is that because the movement is really unpredictable, the Yellow Vests are still trying to find a way to increase their structure and to get more efficient. So in January, for example, for the first time since the beginning of the yellow vest movement the so-called leaders of the movement in Paris decided to make a legal demonstration instead of the wildcat demos that they used to do before. Let me explain: when I said a legal demonstration, they decided to discuss with authorities so the authorities will allow a specific march with the people organizing the demonstration. So for the first time they agreed with the authorities to work hand-in-hand on organizing the demonstration with clearly was a big step back in the process of trying to be some kind of grassroots power against authorities and the government. While doing this, the Yellow Vest movement also decided to create their own security group to protect the Yellow Vest participants, and from this specific security groups they hired a lot of ex-paramilitary that are well known far right figures, and for example some of these ex-paramilitary fought in the Donbass during the Ukrainian upraising along side pro-Russians. It’s really problematic to see that for their own security the Yellow Vest movement decide to hire well known fascists and ex-paramilitary to do the job. That’s a major issue also that we’ve been facing. So far we don’t know if this will keep happening or not so that’s clearly something we need to try to fight against and making this ex-paramilitary also unwelcome.
RG: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
AIP: Yeah, there’s several things. First, at the time we are talking right now there is another demonstration happening. The demonstration’s to celebrate the three month anniversary of the Yellow Vest movement, so it should begin in less than ten minutes. We don’t know what’s gonna happen, there’s going to be a lot of people joining this demonstration because the national call was to gather to Paris. So we will see what’s coming out of this major demonstration, if there is like an increase of people in the street or if it still seems to be stagnating or slowly declining. The major problem, or asset, depending on where you situate yourself, is that it’s still remains really unpredictable so it’s really hard to tell where the movement is going, even among us radicals we are constantly discussing about where do we think this is going now and we clearly have no clue.
It seems that it’s losing some strength little by little because there are less people in the streets than during December, for example, but there is lot a like of new elements that could bring a new momentum to the Yellow Vest movement. For example right now there are students from high school and university that are deciding to go on strike every Friday to fight against climate change, to force the government to make some efforts to fight against climate change. So if these student strikes is gaining momentum and decide to join their forces to the Yellow Vest movement it could bring some kind of like fresh air within the movement and maybe lead to like a new momentum. It’s also important to know that like a week or so ago trade unions decided to make a major stride and demonstration in Paris. So if trade unions also decide to continue their fight and join the forces to the Yellow Vest it could bring more people in the street and maybe like bring more, like, claims within the movement. But what’s important to remember with the Yellow Vest movement and this has been something extremely difficult among radical circles because we had a lot of fights on this issue is that the movement is by itself impure and some radicals consider this impurity as a good reason for not taking part in it instead of understanding that the world we live in by itself impure and so the movement is just an image of the world we live in, and by taking part of it we can try to bring more analysis and structural systemic answers to the structural problem we are all facing right now. So I think it is important that we stop our purity stance and decide to join what is going on right now and to fight from within to like bring the fresh air to the movement with our own criticisms to it.
RG: Well, thanks so much for speaking with us and good luck out there today.
This week on The Final Straw radio we are sharing a chat that Bursts had with New Afrikan, former Black Panther and political prisoner, Zolo Agona Azania. Zolo is from Gary, Indiana where he lives now, working a job and also doing re-entry work with the formerly incarcerated and community service to break cycles of trauma. After 7 and a half years in prison from ages 18-25 where Zolo engaged in political education with members of the Black Panther Party from Indianapolis, he was released. In 1981 he was re-arrested, picked up by the Gary police while walking around the city after a bank robbery took place, resulting in the death of a Gary police lieutenant. Because of his political views and circumstantially being on the street at that time, Zolo was convicted by an all white jury and sentenced to death.
Zolo beat that death penalty from within prison twice and blocked a third attempt by the state to impose it. For the hour, Zolo talks about his life, his parents, his art, his education, his time behind bars, his political development, the Republic of New Africa, and his legal struggle.
This week on the Final Straw, we’re featuring two main events, both themed around the Prison Strike ongoing across Turtle Island until at least September 9th.
First, an interview we conducted with Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. Rashid is a co-founder of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and is the Minister of Defense from within it’s Prison Chapter. He is the author of two books available from Kersplebedeb, Defying the Tomb & Panther Vision, both collections of Rashid’s art and essays on capitalism, racism, imperialism and his view of a road towards liberation. Rashid is a Maoist and presents some interesting arguments in his writings. In this interview, Rashid talks briefly about his own case, his politicization behind bars, organizing the NABPP-PC, it’s split from the New Black Panther Party, cross-racial class organizing, the #PrisonStrike and more. We hope to be able to bring more of Rashid’s voice in the future. To check out his writing and and his quite literally iconic art, check out rashidmod.com. And at the moment you can write to Rashid at the following address:
Kevin Johnson #1007485 Sussex 1 State Prison 24414 Musselwhite Dr. Waverly, VA 23891
Next, we’ll hear an audio post-card that some friends put together, interspersing words of encouragement and audio from a noise demonstration outside Hyde prison in Eastern North Carolina on August 20th. Prisoners at Hyde CI met the outside supporters in the yard and from across lines of razor wire they unfurled three banners with simple statements: “parole”; “better food”; & “In Solidarity”. To read an article about the noise demo, see some pictures and hear about NC specific demands, check out the article, “Community Shows Support as NC Prisoners Rally With Banners“ on ItsGoingDown. Make some noise!
To close out the hour, we will hear some words of encouragement to striking prisoners in #Amerikkka from comrades incarcerated in #Klanada!
If you’re in Asheville today (Sunday September 9th), consider dropping by Firestorm at 610 Haywood Rd at 5pm to join #BlueRidgeABC for the monthly political prisoner letter writing night. Supplies will be free as well as info on writing prisoners, names and addresses, and comradery.
This week William got the chance to speak to Bruno Renero-Hannan, who is an anarchist historical anthropologist from Mexico City, about their solidarity work around two of the original 250 Loxicha Prisoners in the state of Oaxaca. This rebellion and imprisonment occurred almost simultaneously to the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in the mid-late 90s with very different results. We talk about the long and complex history of this case, the similarities and differences between this uprising and that of the Zapatistas, the ongoing political repression of Alvaro Ramirez and Abraham Ramirez, and the economic solidarity push being orgainized by our guest, as well as some stark parallels between this case and that of the remaining 59 J20 defendants. If you would like to see the 45 minute broadcast edit of this interview, you can go to The Final Straw Radio Collection on archive.org.
As per the very reasonable request on the part of the folks doing support for Alvaro and Abraham, we have omitted the Sean Swain segment for this episode. The You Are the Resistance topic did not pair well with the main interview content nor were Keep Loxicha Free supporters aware of the segment. We regret any confusion or discomfort that this caused.
We would like to take a bit of space here to explain to new listeners that many of the Sean Swain segments are meant in the spirit of satire; Swain himself has been a political prisoner for over 25 years at this point, and his humor is sometimes abrasive, but he is a committed believer in the dismantling of all forms of oppression.
He and we are open to feedback on this segment, and any content we present!
Sean Swain #243-205 Warren CI P.O. Box 120 Lebanon, Ohio 45036
Resist Nazis in Tennessee
On Saturday, Feb 17, Matthew Heinbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party will be speaking at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from 1-4pm. If you don’t like this, you can contact the University by calling 8659749265 and demand that they disinvite this open neo-nazi organizer from their campus!
Some Benefits in Asheville
For the drinkers in Asheville, this week features two libation-centric benefits for books to prisoners projects.
On Wednesday, February 14, Valentines Day, three bars in Asheville will be participating in a drink special that will raise money for Tranzmission Prison Project, our local LGBT books to prisoners project with a national scope. You can visit the Crow & Quill on Lexington, the Lazy Diamond around the corner in Downtown or the Double Crown on Haywood in West Asheville on Wednesday for more details.
On Thursday, February 15th at the Catawba’s South Slope Tasting Room & Brewery (32 Banks Avenue #105) for their first New Beer Thursday fundraiser of 2018!! Starting with the release on the 15th and running through March, a portion of the cost of every glass of their pomegranate sour sold will be donated to the Asheville Prison Books Program!
More events coming up this week include: Thursday the 15th at 7pm Blue Ridge ABC is holding a benefit show at Static Age for a local activists with a sliding scale cost. Bands featured are Kreamy Lectric Santa, Cloudgayzer, Secret Shame, Falcon Mitts & Chris Head
Later that night in Asheville, the monthly benefit dance party called HEX will be holding an event at the Mothlight to raise money and materials for A-Hope, which provides services locally to houseless and poor folks. Bring socks, footwear and camping gear to donate!
On Tuesday, April 20th at 6pm at The Shell Studio, 474 Haywood Rd on the second floor, there will be a showing of the locally produced documentary entitled Hebron about human rights struggles in Palestine.
On Friday the 23rd at 6:30pm, the Steady Collective will be participating in a Harm Reduction forum at the Haywood Street Congregation at 297 Haywood St. in downtown.
Also that night, BRABC will be showing the latest TROUBLE documentary by sub.media at 7:30pm at firestorm books and coffee. This will be a second on Student Organizing around the world.
Finally, on Saturday the 24th 9am to 3pm at Rainbow School, 60 State Street in Asheville there’ll be a Really Really Free Market organized by the Blue Ridge General Defense Committee or GDC. Bring stuff that’s still good to share and come back with other stuff that’s still good for free! Perfect for spring cleaning or dealing with inclement weather on a budget.
A Call for Art Submissions for ACAB2018…
A reminder that if you are the sensitive, artistic type, the ACAB2018, or Asheville Carolina Anarchist Bookfair is soliciting art for fundraising and advertising purposes. If you have image ideas that you can put into action and want to share them, that’d be dope. We’re looking for things we can put onto postcards, t-shirts, posters and other swag to spread word about the event and help us cover the costs of operation. Contact us at acab2018@riseup.net
…and for Yours Truly at TFS
Likewise, if you are feeling artsy fartsy and want to help out this show, we’re looking for swag imagery, either as a logo or a standalone piece of art we can feature for fundraising purposes. If you like the show and want to help, post your files on share.riseup.net and send us a link at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net or share it with one of our social media identities. If we choose to use your art, we’ll send you a mix tape with one side produced by each of our regular contributing editors.
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Transcription
This is the transcript of an hour and a half long interviewconducted by The Final Straw radio show, which is a weekly anarchist radio show that hosts interviews about a wide range of topics, including Black liberation, anti racism, anti sexism, LGBTQ solidarity, struggles against extraction industry and pipelines, prisoner solidarity,and solidarity with refugees and migrants, among many other topics. While we do some informal fundraising, this show is a volunteer effort and can be accessed free of charge.
The Final Straw RadioP.O. Box 6004Asheville, NC28816
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The Final Straw Radio: (Introduction) This week, I got the chance to speak with Bruno Renero Hanan, who is an anarchist historical anthropologist from Mexico City about their solidarity work around two of the original 250 Loxicha prisoners in the state of Oaxaca. This rebellion and imprisonment occurred almost simultaneously with the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in the mid to late 90’s with very different results. We talk about the long and complex history of this case, the similarities and differences between this uprising and that of the Zapatistas, the ongoing political repression of Alvaro Ramirez and Abram Ramirez and the economic solidarity push being organized by our guest. As well as some stark parallels between this case and the case of the J20 defendants.
TFSR: Thank you so much for taking the time to come onto the show. Would you tell listeners a little about yourself and talk about what projects you do?
Bruno: Yeah, sure, I’d be happy to. And first of all, thank you for having me on the show. It’s an honor, a pleasure and I really appreciate the space.
My name is Brune Renero Hanan. I am originally from Mexico City where I grew up, although I’ve lived in the United States for quite a while now. And I am from a kind of bi-cultural, bi-national family. So, currently I live in south east Michigan where I am a PHD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. And the main work I’ve been working on the last 3 years has been, partly through political solidarity and party through my academic research with political prisoners in Oaxaca Mexico. In particular over the last several years I’ve been writing about and working in different capacities to support a group of political prisoners known as the Loxicha prisoners who were all Zapotec men incarcerated for several decades since the 1990’s up until just last year. And that’s mostly what we’ll be talking about today. But, other projects that I’ve been involved in, I’ve also done other forms of politically engaged research in the state of Guerrero around guerrilla movements there in the 1970’s and state terror and the so-called Dirty War of state violence there.
I’ve also done stuff around anarchist organizing in Mexico City, other left political stuff around the Cult of Santa Muerte in Mexico City. I’ve been involved in political organizing to support the families of the families of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa. For instance we, here comrades and I in 2014, organized a welcome for the caravan of family members when they came through. I’ve also been involved in anarchistic and antifascist organizing in Ann Arbor and in Michigan, working with Huron Valley. Right now, I’ve kind of brought some of that solidarity with political prisoners in Oaxaca into conversation with folks here in Michigan and that’s sort of become a joint project between folks in Oaxaca and here Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.
As far as resources, the one thing I’d like to plug is our Patreon website. It’s a sort of gofundme sort of thing where people can sign up to make monthly donations which can be anything (as little as $1 each month up to as much as they’d like to. And we’re trying to build up to covering the impossible and unjust court fees being called “damage reparations” which our comrades Abram and Alvaro have to pay each month. So that’s the one thing I would ask people to remember and if they’re able to get on there and donate. So, that website is https://www.patreon.com/keeploxichafree . That Patreon website is what we’re trying to build right now.
And it’s challenging, trying to build it up through folks we know and without having to really go through any questionable or unethical ways of getting money or would compromise this project in any way. It’s sort of going peer to peer, our friends, friend networks, or reaching out in a space like this where people who might also feel solidarity, could join on.
TFSR: And let’s talk about the situation. So, like you mentioned, we’re here to talk about an ongoing situation of political repression against two indigenous, Zapotec men, community members Alvaro Sebastian Ramirez and Abraham Garcia Ramirez who are from the Loxicha region in Oaxaca. They were incarcerated for 20 years, also like you mentioned, for resisting the Mexican state and were just given what is ridiculously called early release. And we’ll talk about that more later. But could you talk about the original struggle in which Alvaro and Abraham got arrested?
Bruno: Definitely. So, this is a slightly complicated story and it’s a long history now. So, we’re talking about the situation of political repression against these two political prisoners, Alvaro & Abraham (no relation between the two of them) and they are both Zapotec community organizers from San Augustin de Loxicha, which is a town in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, very close to the state of Chiapas which is very well known as being the site of the rebellion of the Zapatistas as you mentioned. Yes, Alvaro and Abraham were longterm political prisoners known as the Loxicha prisoners. They were the last 3 to be released but originally this was a group of upwards of 200 prisoners, all of them Zapotec men, a few women later, but from the original group almost entirely men, arrested between 1996 and the late 90’s.
All of them were accused of being complicit in a guerrilla armed uprising that took place on August 28, 1996, when a guerrilla group called The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, attacked soldiers, police and marines, naval installations in various part of Mexico simultaneously that night, but the most forceful of those simultaneous attacks took place on the coast of Oaxaca near a very fancy tourist resort town in a place called La Cruzecita Juatulco. And there, close to 20 police and soldiers died and several guerrillas died as well in this confrontation. And according to the state and federal authorities, they discovered amongst these dead guerrillas that one of the members was a municipal authority from this town San Augustin de Loxicha, where there happened to be this very strong indigenous movement which had emerged in the early 1980’s and was at this point very strong, fairly radical.
Alvaro and Abram were both members of this movement that was largely organized around this indigenous organization called The Organization of Indigenous Zapotec Pueblos, or Communities, formed in 1984.
So, in 1986 when the guerrillas of the EPR attacked soldiers and police, the state ended up basically pointing their fingers at this entire region, this entire region of Zapotec communities within the fairly large municipality of San Augustin de Loxicha. It basically uses this guerrilla uprising as an alibi to crush this strong indigenous movement that had been growing for the previous ten years in this area. So, there’s various ways to answer this question of why are Alvaro and Abraham in prison, what was this original struggle? Part of that original struggle that landed them in prison was their many years of activism and organizing in the OPIC, the Organization of Indigenous Zapotec Pueblos in and around Loxicha.
Alvaro had also been involved in the democratic teachers struggle of Oaxaca since the early 1980’s. Abraham had also been involved in other leftist organizing prior to that as well. So, that’s one answer: they were political prisoners because they were political subjects who were very active in their communities, forming assemblies, organizing marches, enormous marches, taking over the central plaza of Oaxaca City, in the Zocalo, taking over the airport. That’s part of what makes them political prisoners from 1986 onwards.
The other is that they’re accused of being Guerrilleros, members of a revolutionary, clandestine organization which has often been the classic definition of being political prisoners. However, Alvaro and Abraham weren’t the only ones arrested, as I mentioned. They were 2 out of upwards of over 200 people from this cluster of communities that share the Loxicha Zapotec langauge who were all arrested under these charges of being guerrilla’s, but many of them were not even involved in even the region social movement. Many of them were completely a-political or perhaps might have had a contrary politics.
The point being that in the kind of witch-hunt that took place there in the aftermath of the EPR attacks, people were just rounded up randomly at times. It was really a situation of state terror that happened there in San Augustin de Loxicha from late 1996 with the militarization of that region, with the beginning of the mass arrests that led them to this sort of locally well-known story of the Loxicha prisoners. So, militarization, mass arrest, kind of explosion of paramilitarism, a return of violent executions. In addition to the prisoners, there’s also the situation of executions, disappearances, rape… You know, it’s really a horrific situation that took place that didn’t end up getting a lot of attention for many reasons at the time. It got a little attention, but nothing in comparison for instance to the attention that the Zapatistas got in Chiapas at the time. And partly, that had to do with the complicatied reputation of the EPR, this guerrilla movement that has it’s origins in the late 1960’s and 1970’s in other parts of Mexico, Central Mexico, also kind of through coalitions and alliances through, it’s roots in the state of Guerrero.
Going back to the original question of what was the original conflict then that got Alvaro and Abraham to be long-term political prisoners and at that having just gotten down to 2017, that they were in fact the longest ongoing cases of political imprisonment in Mexico that I know of. I don’t know of any political prisoner in Mexico in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s that was in for 20 years or even close.
TFSR: Thank you so much for that incredibly detailed answer. Can you talk about just what they were officially charged with by the state? I just remember seeing Alvaro’s statement, his recorded statement on ItsGoingDown.org about “I was charged with this and this and this and this” and it was just this amazing long list of charges.
Bruno: Yeah, definitely I recommend that folks check out that video, it’s like 3 minutes. Especially if you speak Spanish, even though Alvaro’s just reading from his letter, he’s a very charming person. It’s cool to be able to hear his voice. And for me it was special to produce that video and to be able to see it because, having known him for upwards of 6 years now, it was the first that I was able to film him or take a picture of him or use an audio recorder while talking to him. Even though we’ve had this kind of relationship of interviewer, interviewee for half of a decade.
So, in that video he lists all of those charges and it’s kind of ridiculous, this laundry list of every imaginable crime that you could throw at someone, including terrorism, conspiracy, homicide… Basically, every conceivable high-caliber political and violent crime thrown at somebody. To the extent that in the early days when he was first charged, he had a sentence of 190 years. He was a well-known and respected teacher where he was from, kind of a well-respected and radical organizer. And this is why he ended up with those charges. Partly the fact that he was who he was, as someone who was really working to build autonomy in San Augustin de Loxicha, in a model that was similar to what the Zapatistas were doing, not identical, but something similar.
The combination that Alvaro and his comrades were doing that work and the fact that the Mexican state urgently needed scapegoats and the infliction of actual terror in order to clamp down on the uprising of the Popular Revolutionary Army or anything that smelled like it in order to not be dealing with that front as well as the Zapatista front which at this point the state could not simply annihilate or ignore… So, they had to kind of deal and negotiate with it.
The combination of these two situations are what led them to someone like Alvaro having a 190 year sentence. What exactly these were… The most important of these is Omicidio Calificado, which can be translated sort of like 1st Degree Murder. It’s not exactly the same as 1st degree, it can also be translated as Aggravated Murder. That’s the one that ended up adding the most number of years to the sentence as well as attempted homicide. They were kind of pinning the murder of soldiers and police to them, as well as several of the other long-term Loxicha prisoners. In addition to the charges of aggravated homicide and intended homicide, there was also as I mentioned terrorism, conspiracy, stockpiling of weapons, theft, illicit use of foreign property, damage of former property, illegally detaining someone else or impinging on their freedoms… it’s a long mouthful of things which in the end some of those were dropped through appeals, through different legal actions over the 20 years in prison.
Several of them such as terrorism, stockpiling of weapons, were honest symbolic ornaments placed there by the state to make clear what this was about. On the one hand, dismissing these charges as being about criminals and not authentic, political entities that the State should have to negotiate or deal with such as they were with the Zapatistas, but rather to deny that they were political prisoners while placing these very strongly politically tinted and stigmatizing charges onto their sentences such as terrorism, conspiracy, so on. Which were later dropped. So, terrorism, that kind of very particularly stigmatizing and dangerous charge… Being called a terrorist gives states basically a free hand to do whatever they want to people. And that was even before the so-called War On Terror had begun. This was in the 1990’s, sort of the run-up to the logic of this War On Terror, as well as in this sense developing and practicing some of the methods that the State would later use in the so-called War On Drugs. Both as Narcos and as the State.
Yeah, so the charges, I was saying, in the end that Terrorism, an especially flashy one, got dropped I think around 2009 during an appeal, 2010. But, it was notable to me as I was living in Oaxaca, visiting the prisoners regularly, at which point they were transferred from this low-security state prison where some of them had lived/been held captive, this group of the last 7 of them were transferred to a new high security Federal semi-privatized prison 2 hours south of Oaxaca city. I remember that in a statement from the State government explaining why these prisoners were transferred, they would invoke this charge of terrorism even though it had been dropped already. They said something like “The secretary of Internal State Security announced yesterday in a statement that all of the Federal prisoners in the state of Oaxaca being accused of being Narcos as well as the 7 Loxicha prisoners accused of being armed guerrillas and terrorism were all transferred yesterday to the new Federal Prison in Miahuatlan etc etc”.
So, constantly invoking this terrorism charge even though it was dropped years ago and was always useless, but symbolically those things ring out and give the State a lot of power in being able to manipulate people and coerce people or throw them in prison or use violence against them when you accuse them of being a terrorist. Especially when there’s a lot of silence and un-memory, I would call it, around the issue such as there were around Loxicha, where there’s always been a committed solidarity movement around the prisoners since 1996, but it has waxed and waned, kind of in and out of public perception, submerged and then emerging again into awareness locally, sometimes nationally. At times, gotten international attention. Certainly there has been committed International solidarity from anarchists in France, from the CGT in Spain, folks locally in Oaxaca City, in Mexico City. From, sometimes, fairweather solidarity and sometimes really long-term. I think it’s particularly different anarchist groups or anarchist leaning groups in Mexico and Europe who really stuck with Alvaro in particular. On account of his kind of adopting the 6th Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle of the Zapatistas in the last 7 years. That’s something we can talk about…
TFSR: As you were talking I was thinking about this aspect that the state has which is a kind of toxically manipulative… especially with the stigmatizing charges that you were talking about like terrorism, which… I was interviewing somebody some time ago and they said something like “The war on terror is a war on emotion”, which issomething that is very very difficult to contain and very difficult to define. And it’s something that, even though the charges were dropped, it’s something that follows folks around forever. Which I think is the nature of the carceral state and will sound very familiar to people who have been keeping even half an eye on political repression cases around the world. And you did answer the question that I had, to some degree, I was going to ask “What have solidarity endeavors been like throughout their incarceration and what kind of media attention have they gotten?” And I was wondering if you had any other words about the fair-weather nature of support for the Loxicha prisoners…
Bruno: You’re absolutely right in seeing that one aspect of what the state does is manipulating and coercing. Particularly in some of it’s most egregious ways through methods or strategy such as War on Terror or War on Drugs. You’d mentioned that someone you had interviewed before had called it a sort of War of Emotion against Ghosts, not that one metaphor has to exclude the other.
But I think that you kind of need the emotion in order to animate the war, to allow it to happen. And in order to have the emotions, you need to have the ghosts and they can be ghosts on illusions of things that are there or things that are made up. And I think that toxicity is also really an important concept when thinking about State violence, especially the most directed State of Exception-y violence really depends on ideological toxicity. It strikes me as relevant to the Loxicha story..
The Loxicha story is, as I’ve come to know it, there’s the pre-96 Loxicha story, which is politically the story of a growth of the Inidgenous Movement. And the second half is the story of a community or cluster of communities dealing with State violence and political stigma that particularly took its most direct form in the formation of this group of people that became known as the Loxicha prisoners. As I mentioned, some of them were highly politicized (even radical) political subjects, organizers, militants. Some of them, who became part of this group of hundreds of political prisoners, were completely non-political or political in ways that you wouldn’t think would get them in prison for being Leftist Insurgents. But many of them, almost all of them were Inidgenous, many of them spoke very little Spanish. That’s partly a manifestation of structural racism and classism in the Mexican political/legal/carceral system. Mexican prisons are full of poor people, indigenous people, innocent people… Not that I think that innocent or non-innocent is a formula that works to put people into cages, I don’t think that you can put people into cages. But this is one of those lines that people in cages, the prisoners themselves would say to me “Prisons are full of poor, full of Indigenous, full of Innocent people.” So, that’s sort of some of their thinking.
So, in any case, you get hundreds of people thrown in there and part of what this focused mass-incarceration of Indigenous people from this one area accomplished was to fracture this political Indigenous movement that had emerged there in the previous ten years. Kind of fractured, and stopped it in its tracks. The State is always good, the Mexican State in particular, at causing infighting, infiltrating social movements and here it really showed its talent at undoing and fracturing a social movement, pitting it’s leaders and members against each other. While at the same time, they were being attacked on all sides. They were confronting militarization, the rise of paramilitarism, the return of caciquismo and pistolerismo, the rule of old political bosses and gunmen which that organization had emerged partly in order to oppose.
What the State needed at this point in 1996 when it was dealing with the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, really taking the State by surprise… There was certainly a lot of fear on the part of the State of other Indigenous rebellions or other rebellions of the poor, of other Zapatista movements and uprisings happening in other parts of the country. The State, quite frankly, was terrified of this. So in ‘96 when you get yet another surprising attack, but at this point the Mexican State, the Federal government, had no other choice but to engage with the Zapatistas because they were very successful in what they did. In forming their communities and their rebellions, a revolutionary army. Throughout the 1980’s and early 90’s, the Zapatistas… it wasn’t all victories.
Now in the decades that they’ve been around, they’ve suffered many losses and confronted great struggles, but it’s been a successful revolution. I guess that’s just one of the important things that has to be noted in this discussion. The Zapatista uprising has been success, and that’s why in 2018 you can visit Chiapas and visit the Caracoles and actually witness a successful living, breathing and walking Revolutinoary society, small and embattled as it may be. And this other story that we’re talking about here, this kind of other Revolutionary movement that emerged in Oaxaca in the early 80’s and 90’s, is the story, sadly, of a failed revolution on the other hand.
It’s a story of a rose that failed for many reasons. Part of them might have been internal contradictions, but part of it was unrelenting and effective State violence. And it’s really hard to talk about what happened in Oaxaca and with the Loxicha prisoners and not refer it to what happened and was happening in Chiapas at the same time. It was about surviving. The Mexican state certainly tried to annihilate it, using military force against it, and could not. They couldn’t use military force and they were not effective with the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party / Partido Revolucionario Institucional), the long-term ruling party in Mexico. None of it’s large and well-tried arsenal of political, social-economic tools of co-optation was effective at undoing the Zapatista movement, either. It was somewhat effective, they lost some of their Caracoles/autonomous regions, but 5 of them, there they are!
But this is the reality that the Mexican State had to deal with in 1994, 95, 96. And with the emergence, then, of this other Guerrilla uprising with the face of the EPR, the Mexican State effectively made it’s project to take a different course of action then to basically annihilate them. Because of how well the Zapatistas grounded themselves, the state was negotiating with them and refused to do this on two fronts. They said “we’re going to recognize the Zapatistas as a political entity, we’re not going to say that specifically, but we’re at the negotiating table.” By 1996 you had the State negotiating with the Zapatistas over potential Constitutional reforms that would recognize Indigenous autonomy. As the EPR makes itself known, it’s strongest in parts of Oaxaca and Guerrero and parts of central Mexico, but the state at all levels organized itself to focus on the military solution to dealing with the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) and with other Indigenous communities that may or may not have been involved, may or may not have sympathized but where there was a risk of that… That was the Loxicha story. Yes, there was some presence of this revolutionary movement, the EPR, but in throwing so many people (including “innocent people” into prison) part of what you get is this sort of social punishment. It doesn’t matter if you were in or you weren’t, whether you knew or you didn’t. It was here, it was around you, so you were all going to pay for some kind of a random act.
Some of the high profile prisoners among the Loxicha prisoners, were the Municipal Authorities. So, essentially the entire democratically elected, local government of the municipality in Oaxaca, the majority of local government municipalities. More than 400 of the 500 of these entities, like counties, are ruled by Usos y Costumbres. It means that indigenous communities at the municipal level can determine their own way of electing local authorities and it also means that they do this to the exclusion of political parties. So, this is how the authorities in Loxicha are elected, that this has practically been happening pretty much always in indigenous communities in Oaxaca but had only become Constitutionally recognized one year earlier in 1995 as part of efforts of the Oaxacan State level (Mexico’s most indigenous state). It was their way of trying to placate the indigenous communities in the way of throwing them a bone in the form of recognizing autonomy to a limited extent. So obviously it’s not coincidental that it’s one year after the Zapatista Uprising.
TFSR: I was really curious about the relationship between the Loxicha uprising to the Zapatista revolution, and you spoke to that really really eloquently and I thank you for that because you know, the Zapatistas are world wide such a revolutionary example and are very very looked to, and the examples that they bring into revolutionary discourse are very cherished I think. And I think that it’s a really poignant situation to me when I’m hearing you talk about it cause these two things were going on so concurrently and one of them is way more lower profile and the one that’s way more lower profile somebody you know, was in prison for 20 years, you know? It’s very poignant to me that these two things were happening simultaneously. But yeah I thank you for talking about that, that wasn’t really a question it was just a reflection.
Bruno: I can actually say one or two things more about it, so I wouldn’t want to make it sound like the Zapatista’s fault that the Loxichas and the indigenous movement in Loxicha kind of was dealt a harder hand, you know I wouldn’t want to kind of say “oh well because the Zapatistas were getting all this attention people in Loxicha were screwed over”.
A way of understanding the different forms of attention they got but it’s very much to its credit that the Zapatista movement is still there today, and I think it’s partially due to the fact that they really knew how to organize. It’s why they’re there now. But I do want to say something more about the more substantial versus fair weather forms of solidarity.
So, one of the facets or one of the realities of the Loxicha story in its second phase as a story of many many political prisoners and their many families, tons of fractured families and fractured communities who then, while faced with a lot of violence, have to organize themselves in order to out of nowhere create this prisoner solidarity freedom movement, one important aspect of that Loxicha story as a prisoner liberation story is that the struggle was made particularly difficult by its association with this particular armed group, the EPR. So, while in the mid ’90s a lot of people wanted to be on board with supporting the Zapatistas because really they did have a very novel, very moving, very inspiring political message, which is why they really changed political discourse at the time. And a lot of people wanted to be involved with them, whereas the Popular Revolutionary Army, the EPR, at least kind of at its leadership level – this was a national, IS still a national organization, it’s still around – their discourse was fairly stuck in the past, it was still a very old fashioned stodgy Marxist-Leninism with a Maoist streak that really wasn’t speaking to people. To be honest, I’ve been studying this cluster of movements for years, and I find it really hard to get through a statement by the EPR through to the end, it’s just really hard to read.
[Interviewer laughs]
Whereas with the Zapatistas stuff, it’s impossible to put down! So there’s partly this: the EPR’s political discourse, its rhetoric, its public statements, don’t really inspire. Also the EPR comes out of the longer lineage of armed clandestine movements in Mexico, and some of these such as the PROCOUP-PDLP, which is the Partido Revolucionario Obrero Campesino Union del Pueblo – Partido de los Pobres. So this predecessor of the EPR, one of its predecessors, has a lot of dark associations; in the 1970s and ’80s that group was involved with a lot of violent infighting within its own ranks, there are these stories of so called “revolutionary trials” against its own former comrades, very foul treatment of its own political prisoners and then disavowing them, and in some cases killing its own former prisoners who had abandoned rank.
So there were these dark associations, some of which are on the level of legend some of which are actual, around this organization. And the fact that also then in 1996 when the EPR rises up, the Zapatistas who really are holding a lot of the world’s political imagination, or at least in Mexico and many other places, they’d already put down their weapons. The actual armed confrontation between the Zapatistas and the Mexican state lasted for twelve days. Then because the Zapatistas have always been really good at listening – the practice of listening has always been really integral to a lot of their political praxis on many levels – they heard this public outcry calling for an end to the war, and they put down their weapons and have since then, while there is still a revolutionary army that is a part of its movement and it’s not going away. But it has managed to successfully implement and develop its revolutionary society and communities without having to ever go on the military offensive since 1994.
Anyway at that point, it had been two years since then when in 1996 the EPR rises up, shooting up police and soldiers, and for several of these reasons then a lot of people weren’t that sympathetic when you then get this story of indigenous political prisoners who are all accused of being members of this particular revolutionary organization. And, you know it really doesn’t matter, clearly for most of them the Loxicha movement wasn’t the EPR. The Loxicha prisoners were really the product of a witch hunt, and you had a very diverse group of individuals in there. So because these many associations around the EPR, the state was very good at stigmatizing that movement. And so then as you arrest people who you accuse of being members of the EPR, you call them “terrorists”, and then it’s very easy to throw them away and to make people think twice before getting associated.
So as I began saying, a lot of people wanted to get on board with the Zapatistas in terms of NGOs, human rights organizations, legal aid, translators, all sorts of solidarity. But with the Loxichas, people were very hesitant. It was a very very limited kind of people, of organizations, essentially it was one of each category: one human rights organization, one team of solidarity lawyers, one NGO, that got on board with the legal and political defense of the Loxichas in the aftermath of ’96. And you know, this was making a full loop back to one of your questions, I think this is really one of the manifestations of the state being effective at using toxicity and stigma as it needs to. So here because of its political needs it was essentially effective at stigmatizing an entire community, a racialized stigma, such that for years young men or adult men from Loxicha would never say they were from Loxicha to this day. People will say they’re from the coast, or any other town, but people just won’t identify with being from Loxicha because it’s very dangerous. And nobody wants to get involved in anything that smells of Loxicha much less the EPR, because as late as 2007, whatever you say about the EPR the truth is that its own militants are still being disappeared by the Mexican state. So effectively being branded as EPR is to be branded as someone that the state might very well disappear or at the very least thrown into prison for years.
It became a very very toxic accusation, and that’s one of the byproducts of this whole conflict, of the Loxicha crisis.
TFSR: (Break audio) You’re listening to our conversation with Brunero Rennero-Hanan about the situation regarding Alvaro and Abraham Ramirez – no relation between the two – who are two out of the two hundred fifty original indigenous people arrested in the Loxicha region of Oaxaca in the mid ’90s. If you’d like to hear a 45 minute edit of this interview you can visit archive.org and search for The Final Straw Radio Collection. We’ll be back with the rest of the interview after a short musical break, what you’re hearing right now is Gabylonia with her 2012 release Abuso de Poder. Shoutout to subMedia’s hip hop podcast Burning Cop Car which is where I first heard this track.
[musical break]
TFSR: I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mid talking about who are Alvaro and Abraham personally, you mentioned at several points that you had a personal relationship with Alvaro, but will you talk about who they are and the projects that they do, and what is important to them politically these days?
Bruno: Yeah, definitely. So first how I got to know them -and I have a personal relationship with both of them, Alvaro and Abraham – because both of them were among the last 7 of the Loxicha prisoners. So of that group of prisoners that was upwards of of 200, maybe as many as 250 in the late ’90s, all those that were originally associated with this case there were still seven of them in prison in 2012. I started visiting them and interviewing them to record their oral histories. So, I started visiting Oaxaca regularly around 2008 because I was beginning my doctoral research around questions of social movements and historical memory, and originally I was interested in students around the popular assembly of the peoples of Oaxaca, and around then is when I became aware of the Loxicha prisoners who were definitely an old story, it’s kind of one of these long still breathing stories of state violence and grassroots solidarity that I didn’t quite understand too well but it was something that was because of the effervescence of the 2006 urban uprising of the Iapo, there was this rising to the surface of other forgotten or dormant political struggles.
I got to know Abraham and Alvaro in 2012 when I shifted my research from the popular assembly of the peoples of Oaxaca in that 2006 movement to the Loxicha story. And so I moved for a while to their community, to San Agustin Loxicha, where I lived for a bit over a year conducting interviews there and doing historical research, ethnography. At the same time that I started visiting them in two state prisons close to Oaxaca City, in Iscotel and Etla, I would visit these last seven of the Loxicha prisoners. I ended up getting to know five of them, or interviewing and recording the oral histories of five of them, and I got to know particularly well a few of them. In particular, Alvaro and Abraham as well as a couple of others.
So my relationship with them was from the beginning one of political solidarity and accompaniment as well as being centered around this project of recording their oral histories. It’s partly for my academic research in order to try and get this piece of paper, but I’ve often seen my role in politically engaged research as being someone who can amplify the voices of others, or share stories. That really became the basis of our relationship, the beginning was I would go and visit them, and six of them were in Iscotel Prison. This being kind of a low security prison, I would be able to spend several hours hanging out with them just listening and writing down stories in my notebook.
Low security prisons in Mexico might be kind of surprising to what Americans imagine prisons being like. The fact is that it’s still a prison, and a place that is locked up and constrained, but a place like Iscotel Prison, the prisoners didn’t have to wear uniforms. They could walk around in the periphery inside the gates, and around the building. And the Loxicha prisoners having been there so long, when I got to know them they had already been there for like fifteen years, they’d kind of accrued some seniority, some respect from both the guards, authorities, other prisoners. One of them was on his own in a different prison in Etla, Zacharias who became a master carpenter there, but the other six were in Iscotel. They were all in one single cell, cell 22, where several had been since 1996. Originally there were maybe 50 or 60 of them in two cells, but as they ended up slowly getting out and just those with the longest sentences remained in, the first six of them lived in cell 22 there in Iscotel Prison. And it was always striking to me that a prison, its main purpose is kinda to isolate humans, to de-socialize them, to try to extract them from society, and I was always struck by how limited the state could be for just how great humans are at subverting that. How the Loxicha prisoners had over these 15 years been able to carve out a little habitable space, a little human corner, within this dehumanizing place.
So Alvaro had also become a carpenter in prison, he’d picked up the trade there, and for instance built a second story inside the cell, what’s called a tapanco, kind of a little loft so that they wouldn’t be so cramped and that way two of them had their beds upstairs and the other four were down below. He also ended up building a little altar to the Virgin and their other patron saints, in Mexico it’s not uncommon at all to be leftist, even radical, perhaps even revolutionary, and still be devout, they’d organize events.
So anyway that was their life in there, and I got to know them through this relationship of interviews and recording their stories. The first time I got to know Alvaro actually was in the context of a forum that was organized by a collective known as La Voz de Loxiches Zapotecos en Prision, which is a collective that Alvaro is part of, along with some of his relatives and other supporters. And so they in conjunction with La Rev Contra la Revolucion, the network against repression which is part of the Zapatista network. So they collaborated to make this forum about Alvaro or for him, in solidarity with him, as well as other political prisoners in Oaxaca, in Chiapas. And the second day of this forum involved making a visit to Iscotel, so that’s kind of how I first went in. I was hesitant at first to just go in to try to visit them and say like “Hey I just want to hear about your stories.”
I thought it was important to first go in on the side of political solidarity rather than the side of oral history. And so my first encounter with Alvaro was in the context of the second day of this forum when about a dozen of us, including some members of his collective and relatives and then a few other anarchist-anarchist leaning comrades from Mexico City and Chiapas, Zapatista supporters who ended up going in and to my surprise ended up having a seminar – you know, sitting in a circle and discussing politics and prison with Alvaro himself – inside the prison. I never really expected that something like that could happen, so that to me was one of my early lessons in what effective prisoner accompaniment and solidarity looks like.
Let me tell you about them as well, and my impressions of them. So, of those last seven Loxicha prisoners who were in when I got to know them in 2012 and started working with a few of them, the first one I got to know was Alvaro. He’s the one I’ve gotten to know best so far, and this is partly because his political project and his views align the most with mine, and I’ve just found him to be a very inspiring and inspired political collaborator and interlocutor, he’s someone I’ve learned a lot from. But anyway so, Alvaro has been a political organizer and radical pretty much his whole life. He grew up in a small community called Iganoma Guay, which is a little village in the municipality of San Agustin de Loxicha, as a Zapotec speaker in a peasant family. I think he didn’t have a pair of shoes until he was 12 years old, he grew up farming but ended up working in the country side and then as a young man went to become a teacher.
In Oaxaca since the 1980s, which is when he started the teacher’s union, there has been a fairly powerful and at times radical movement. He was part of that original radical emergence of that kind of the Democratic Teacher’s Movement in the early ’80s, and then some of his early political struggles back in Loxicha, back near his home, were the establishment of schools for communities. Then in 1984 he was one of the co founders of the organization of indigenous Zapotec communities or pueblos, the OPIZ, and he also became a member of the local municipal government. So from the mid ’80s to the mid ’90s, Alvaro basically dedicated himself full time to becoming an organizer, and so this meant organizing the communities of Loxicha politically, internally, often in order to really try to break the power of casicas and pistoleros, political bosses and gun men in the region.
Loxicha was a place where political violence was really rampant, there was a lot of land theft, peasants were really badly exploited by middle men purchasers – coyotes – who would buy their coffee, this was a coffee growing region. And so some of Alvaro’s early struggles with the OPIZ were to try and combat some of the biggest problems of the communities which were poverty and that political violence and marginalization. He ended up being an important figure within the OPIZ through the ’90s and up until he had to go into hiding once the persecution of the movement began particularly in earnest, although he’d been in hiding and kind of living a partly clandestine life in the past before. And then he was arrested in 1998, as he mentions in that video that’s on the publication on It’s Going Down, he mentioned that he was detained in mid December in 1998 but then it wasn’t until 11 days later that he was actually presented at a prison and this was because for 11 days he was disappeared and tortured by the authorities who were trying to force him into making false confessions, to denounce his comrades, and this was something that happened frequently with many of the arrests and detentions of people from Loxicha. Many cases of torture and forced confessions, signing hundreds of blank pages.
So then Alvaro is later sent to state prison in Etla where he stayed for many years. He was a victim of an assassination attempt there several years later and then he was transferred to Iscotel Prison where most of the other Loxicha prisoners were. That’s where I got to know him. At the point when I got to know him he had gotten kind of a new political faith and he was by then the most politically active and most radical of them. I think several of the others were perhaps experiencing political burnout after so many years of struggle, of different failed options. And I think Alvaro also suffered from burnout, that’s something that I’m sure is common for prisoners in general. But at this point Alvaro was going through a kind of political re-animation that had been brought about probably a few years before when he became really invested in the project of the Zapatistas and particularly that which is explained in the 6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. That has really become one of the most important parts of his political project since then, he kind of found a new political energy at that point sharing it with other prisoners, trying to enact it. I think the Zapatista discourse really served for him to re think a lot of his current political practice; inside the prison he started thinking about how to think about new forms of organization, how to talk to other people about horizontal organizing and autonomous work, how to get that message through in a successful way.
He also began corresponding and engaging with other prisoners who were adherents of the 6th Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle. And I think it also served partly to reinterpret his own political trajectory and his past.
Some of the most insightful and exciting political discussions I’ve had were with Alvaro, and his daughter and her partner who were some of the members of the collective that has supported Alvaro for many years, at least since 2009, built around this Zapatista model. Not that it’s trying to replicate, but to just use some of those basic principles. And some of that work has been around re-thinking as people in solidarity with him, cause his relatives are his allies but also for himself, kind of re-thinking what it is to be a political prisoner as a political subject. To re-think what solidarity looks like, that solidarity isn’t charity, or a favor, that it’s not done for someone but with someone. Really trying to place a political prisoner at the very center of his, her, their struggle for liberation. So in sum, Alvaro is someone who has inspired and taught me a lot about prison, about freedom, about solidarity, about autonomy. His Zapatismo has become a really influential thing for him, and so as soon as he got out of prison in 2017 one of the first things he did was, instead of now just corresponding with that Zapatista network and that network organized by adherents of the 6th, he went and started meeting people.
He got involved immediately with the campaign to support Marichuy, the potential candidate for the National Indigenous Congress, was kind of a recent Zapatista project to try to subvert the national elections in Mexico. He joined the campaign to support her and get signatures, and joined their tour through southern Mexico and followed them to the Zapatista communities. He ended up visiting all 5 caracoles, which I know a lot of people who claim to be Zapatista supporters who haven’t visited even one, certainly not 5!
He had just gotten out of prison, been inside for 20 years, that’s a scary moment for a lot of people getting out of long term incarceration. People are often very flustered, maybe kind of scared, suffering from some trauma. He certainly had no money but he somehow just made it work.
And then I can tell you about Abraham. Abraham was one of the next prisoners that I got to know by recording their oral histories. Abraham Garcia Ramirez is like Alvaro someone who grew up very poor in a rural community in the municipality of San Agustin de Loxicha, he’s from Santa Cruz. He tells a story about not being able to get past the 5th grade at the closest school because he suffered an accident when his teacher’s donkey had a rope attached to it that accidentally caught on his leg and ended up dragging him several meters and messing up his leg really badly to the extent that he couldn’t walk. And his parents were afraid to take him to a doctor because they were afraid that they would amputate his leg, which may sound silly but it’s not a story about these ignorant parents, those stories are expressions of what structural racism and poverty look and feel like where indigenous people, speakers of Zapotec like Abraham’s parents, were generally treated so poorly with so much derision, discrimination, by authorities, by doctors, judges, police, people who held power, it was so common that they were afraid that if they took their son in that they would sooner amputate his leg than fix it.
So Abraham tells a story about not being able to back to school because he basically sat at home on a little stool for a year and would just read by himself. He sat on his own, he continued working as a coffee cultivator from a very early age. Then in his youth he ended up getting involved first through a kind of leftist political party, the PRD, on the coast of Oaxaca, and then I think being disappointed with party politics, he ended up then hearing about the indigenous movement of the OPIZ that was forming back in his hometown and around Loxicha. And when he went back there in the early ’90s he ended up getting involved.
And so I would say that Abraham like Zacharias, another of the last prisoners to get out, were part of kind of like a second generation of all these militants and community organizers. So Abraham was very charismatic, he was very charming and effective political organizer, so at this point the OPIZ in the early ’90s really had a lot of political presence throughout most of the 70 odd towns and villages that make up the municipality of San Agustin de Loxicha. So Abraham was someone who was organizing people to organizing assemblies, getting people to come out. Things he would do would be to organize in communities internally to counter an absence of the state in many places, to be able to deal with problems on their own whether it was questions of, say, domestic violence: Abraham would say “ok we’ve got this problem, how do we get to the root of it?” This led to women organizing themselves and saying that alcohol was one of the biggest problems behind domestic violence in the communities, and so many communities ended up banning alcohol. Enacting that kind of local change was part of what these organizers including Abraham were doing as well as in some cases organizing to make demands of the State, whether through negotiating with the State itself at points or organizing enormous marches of hundreds or in some cases thousands of people to take the highway and march to Oaxaca City, four hours to the north, or to occupy the central plaza in Oaxaca, to take the airport.
So then by 1996 when the EPR uprisings happened, Abraham was a well known organizer. And certainly the State had its eye on him, because he’d been one of the important organizers in taking the plaza in Oaxaca City, the airport. So it was very easy to pin the guerilla accusation on him, as well as many others who were well known activists or organizers with this organization of the OPIZ. By the time I got to know Abraham as another of the long term prisoners who’d been in for decades, he always struck me for being extremely humble. I’m not sure if that’s the most flattering thing..
TFSR: It’s not necessarily like a quality you would find in – you mentioned that he’s very charismatic and very charming, and humility is a really interesting character trait to go along with those two things. I don’t often find that.
Bruno: One of the striking things about Abraham is that he is humble, and you’re right that is sometimes an unusual feature in charming or charasmatic figures. But that’s I think one of the things that’s notable about indigenous and peasant movements in a place like Mexico, I was always struck by the motto or the principles of the organization that Abraham and Alvaro were militants in back in the ’80s and ’90s, the OPIZ, their 3 core principles were discipline, honesty, and humility. And you say ok, discipline and honesty are pretty standard fare for the values of activists, maybe even revolutionaries, but humility is not something you often find in the espoused values of revolutionary movements. But I think it’s certainly an expression of this being a peasant and indigenous movement rooted in the country side, and humility is something that’s really highly valued in the communities.
And it’s something like someone like Abraham certainly really lives by. By the time that I got to know him better and was recording his stories, he was not as politically involved. At that point he was a bit more focused on his legal case, plus he had a baby daughter; he’d separated from his previous partner in prison and met another partner there. This was at that time a co-ed prison, and they had a baby daughter who was born there in prison, and in fact grew up there for the first couple years of her life, and that was really the main focus of his attention at that point. Now currently, since he got out in 2017, he’s returned to some of his organizing but at a very local level. I think he’s been re adjusting to life on the outside slowly, but he’s been living in a shelter that was one of the material gains you could say of the Loxicha Prisoners Movement. They eventually managed to extract this shelter from the State in a concession in the early 2000s where now several families who were victims of state violence in Loxicha now live. It used to be mostly for families of prisoners to be able to stay in Oaxaca while they visited from Loxicha.
But anyway, now people who were victims of violence in different forms now live there, and Abraham and Zacharias are both living there. Abraham is kind of taken upon himself to reorganize the space where you’ve got dozens of people living in order to make it a little more comfortable and clean and pleasant for the people living there. And on that, he’s also working to try and support himself and his family, his wife who’s still in prison and his smallest daughter who’s 5 in school. He’s weaving baskets to support himself like that, to try and help his comrade Zacharias to set up a carpentry workshop. And that’s what he’s up to these days.
TFSR: One of the reasons that we both are talking right now is that they are out of prison, but they are being forced to pay some pretty exorbitant fees to the Mexican State for so called “damage reparations”. Could you talk a little bit about what they are being forced to pay per month and is this a common tactic on the part of the Mexican State for extracting funds from former political prisoners?
Bruno: Yeah, so Alvaro and Abraham got out finally after 20 years in prison, on July 7th of 2017. And so for 20 years the demands for them and for the other prisoners has always been immediate and unconditional freedom. And finally they were able to get their freedom after being robbed of 20 years of their life, but in order to accept it they basically had to sign onto a really sordid deal where in order to be recognized as being accepting of a quote unquote “early release”, because at this point their sentences were around 30 years, and having gone through 2/3rds of their sentence and proven that they are well behaved or something like that, then they were granted this so called benefit of being given an early release. In order to do that they said ‘we’ll give you the early release but you have to accept a whole list of conditions’ some of them just kind of being symbolic nonesense, like “I promise not to do drugs or commit crimes”, but also they had to promise to pay these so called damage reparations to the court. Which allegedly are a way of monetizing the deaths that they accuse them of causing. But really this is just ransom money that goes to the courts.
So each of them are being charged slightly different figures, but close to around 125,000 pesos, which is sort of like 7,000 dollars depending on the exchange rate, over the course of 2 years. Which translates basically to paying in the case of Abraham 250 dollars more or less to the courts each month and for Alvaro, about 280 dollars each month. Which is a ludicrous amount! I mean I would find it hard to be paying that each month on top of my rent, and frankly the kind of money that you can come by even as a relatively modestly living person in the US is impossible compared to Mexico. So to assume that ordinary people, not to mention poor people, could pay this in Oaxaca is unrealistic. Not to mention people from rural communities who happened to have spent the last 20 years in prison and just got out. It’s just another slap in the face right, this added injustice heaped on top of a mountain of injustices, the core of which is 20 years of prison built of course on top of all the injustices that led these people to rising up against the State in various forms, or confronting the State, and then being made political prisoners. So anyway, this is just yet one more injustice. And part of why we’ve taken it up here.
Through my connections with the Loxicha prisoners to help out however I could, and we’ve taken it up here in the US, even though there’s a network of support for Alvaro and Abraham in Mexico, it’s just doing something in the vein of economic solidarity is much easier here in the US. Even just a few dollars that might not be a lot to people here, even ordinary people who might have low-paying jobs, just a couple of bucks a month is something that we can afford. If we hit up some wealthier Liberals, maybe they can throw in some more. That’d be great! But even with some very small donations built up from a pool of friends and comrades, I think we can hopefully get to covering that $530 a month that would cover both of their damage reparation fees. Thus, helping them to not be forced to go back to prison. That’s really the punchline behind this. They’re being charged these damage reparations, essentially ransom by the courts, under the threat of being forced back into prison for another 10 years.
They both realize that this is a threat that they face and they’re both very philosophical about it, but it’s impossible to fathom (for them, their families, friends) that they’d go back in for another 10 years for this completely unjust and counter-insurgent political imprisonment.
TFSR: In a recent statement by Alvaro that’s posted on ItsGoingDown, he makes a declaration of solidarity with the J20 defendants and he calls the process “an attack against the youth who resist, reveal themselves and rebel.” Will you talk about the parallels between this case and those of the J20 defendants, 59 of whom are still facing decades in prison?
BR: Gladly. To be forced to think of the parallels between the Loxicha case and the J20 defendants amongst the friends and comrades here in South East Michigan who have worked with us to start this economic solidarity project with the Loxicha Prisoners, Abraham and Alvaro, that includes a couple of the J20 defendants who live here in Michigan. As we started up this economic solidarity project, I was really pleased, I thought it was really cool, that these comrades in the J20 defense, were keen to help out. And then it struck me that it made perfect sense, that you would get really heart-felt solidarity without having to really think about it much from folks who are facing the prospect of political imprisonment with people who are just emerging from it. The conditions and situations of the two movements are different in many ways: one in the United States during the Trump Era; the other we’re talking about in the mid-90’s in Mexico. And yet, the parallels are looking at violence and political imprisonment from opposite sides of a prism.
It’s sort of like in the case of the J20 defendants, you’ve got this original group of around 250 (coincidentally 250 people arrested and accused of ludicrous crimes, these really symbolically charged & trumped up charges aimed by the state at putting dissidents behind bars and at dissuading people from dissenting against the state; politically motivated use of the courts and of prisons to scare people, to inflict a bit of terror against dissidents or possible dissidents… Even among the J20 defendants, it was very clearly targeted against people who were marching under the banner of anti-capitalism, anti-fascism. But you’ve also got people who were thrown in there who were journalists, photographers, who weren’t directly involved in protesting but it doesn’t matter, it’s a part of the message. Similarly in Loxicha, in the mid-90’s, again you’ve got different conditions, but a group of around 250 people who were arrested, detained, sent to prison, under these symbolically loaded political charges. Again, some of them were resisting, protesting, organizing against capitalism and the State. Some of them just got caught up in the violence, swept up in the witch-hunt. And yet, I think that what caught the imagination of these comrades who are J20 defendants in Michigan who want to support Alvaro and Abraham is to think… Here the J20 defendants are looking down the barrel, looking at the prospect of decades of political imprisonment for resisting the state, for protesting it. And they’re looking at these comrades in Mexico, from very different worlds, but one which also for resisting capitalism and organizing these hundred of people. Instead of looking at the prospect of it, they’re emerging from decades of political imprisonment.
This led to conversations here about how there must be a lot to learn from one site to the other. What can folks who are young organizers such as the J20 defendants, what can they learn, what can we all learn from listening tot he story of people who did suffer through decades of political imprisonment. And the other way around, what can folks like Alvaro and Abraham learn from new forms of resistance and solidarity that are emerging from and being expressed by something like the J20 defense. So, it was this cool surprise here to get J20 defendants in on the project and to have these discussions and to compare the two phenomenon. And then, when some of us visited Alvaro this past December, we had a visit with him now the first time in freedom, recorded this video, did some interviews. We were talking about J20 and the J20 defendants so, on one had he hadn’t heard about the J20 (which shows that we need more communication across Leftist networks internationally) but then we had a really great conversation where we explained what had happened on J20 and the situation of the defendants were.
It took so little explanation, he was immediately captivated, perceptive, clapping his hands “Of course, that makes perfect sense. Obviously these are the repercussions, this is what the State did in reaction to those who are marching under the banner of anti-capitalism and anti-fascism.” And we had one of those classical, great discussions that Alvaro is fantastic at, discussing some of these comparisons. One fo the great things to come out of it was that we kind of proposed that this could be the beginning of some exchanges. We thought it’d be really great to organize some form of dialogue, exchanges, encounters somehow between Alvaro, his comrades, the former prisoners in Mexico and J20 defendants and their allies in the US to give this conversation some actual substance. And there, Alvaro and comrades offered then that they could disseminate that and share it in a newspaper like Unios (a newspaper of the network of adherents of the 6th Declaration [of the Lacondon Jungle, the Other Campaign of the Zapatistas]).
TFSR: That’s so wonderful that it was such a productive conversation. That makes me really happy to hear that and congratulations for being a part of that and for setting that up and drawing those parallels. I think that’s really really awesome.
BR: Thanks. And out of that conversation is where Alvaro wanted to send a shoutout to the J20 Defendants that we recorded that’s on the video on Its Going Down. So, I have to confess that last line in the video which you quoted where he says “we recognize this as an attack against the youth that organizes and rebels and reveals itself”… I was the one who wrote the subtitles on that video. I was translating this letter which he was reading from. The word “to rebel” in Spanish, which is “que se rebela” he spelled it “revela” which means “reveals itself”. I knew he meant “rebels” and I wondered if whether that had been purposeful, so I translated it as both: it both rebels and reveals itself. You never know, was it a slip of the pen or that might have just been Alvaro’s message itself. In one word, you both rebel and reveal yourself.
TFSR: I liked it very much, especially in the context of J20, which was a Black Bloc, which is supposed to be an anonymous thing, that was then revealed by police, it was then also… people were doxxed by fascists and members of the alt-right. I found it to be a very great, linguistic insertion. Like, you revealed yourself, that’s courageous, you rebelled and that was courageous. I thought that was brilliant.
BR: I love that. And you know, you’re totally right. You mention, it was the Black Bloc where people concealed their identities, their faces, and that they do so in order to reveal themselves., in order to rebel. It’s kind of like what the Zapatistas did in covering their faces. “In order to be noticed, in order to have a face, we had to cover our faces.” I’ve always loved that through this kind of anonymizing yourself, you become someone.
I kind of imagine that in rebelling and revealing themselves, Alvaro might be saying that in that act of rebellion that you reveal yourself, not only to the State, to others, but even to yourself. People discover themselves in that moment of action, as Frantz Fanon said, “Consciousness is born in action, not the other way around.”
TFSR: Could you remind us of the Patreon link and talk a little bit about the economic solidarity project / endeavor being organized under the banner “Keep Loxicha Free”?
BR: That’s kind of the main focus of what we’re tryihng to organize with this economic solidarity, so I really appreciate the change to broadcast it a bit. For most of us who are working on this, this is our first time doing this kind of economic solidarity. I, personally at least, find that economic solidarity can feel kind of tricky or off-putting. Economic Solidarity is one tiny fragment, one tiny instance of what solidarity can look like. And I think for those of us who are further left, with anarchistic leanings, Zapatista sympathizers, dealing with money is something that’s really uncomfortable. We don’t like doing it and it’s partly why Alvaro and Abraham themselves have not been able to raise that money.
A couple of the other last Loxicha prisoners who got out last year had the same conditions but were able to raise that money through connections to Unions or through asking the State. Alvaro and Abraham had not wanted to do that. A part of the way that these ransoms work in Mexico is that you have to ask someone powerful to help you out and you end up indebted. So, what we’re trying to do by bringing that economic solidarity pitch here to the US (and
internationally, if people want to donate) is to try to take that weight off of having to ask for the money over there. Instead, we said “let us ask for you, it’ll probably be easier.” But several of us have never done fundraising, so it’s figuring it out as we do it. We thought that one of these go-fund-me type pages would work and that Patreon with it’s monthly donation system would work for this.
So, we’re trying to work up to $530 per month, we’re currently at $201, almost halfway there. In recent months we’ve been making this work also by presenting this story at events, going to events organized by comrades and friends, and making little 5-10 minute pitches and passing the bucket. Through that along with the Patreon we’ve been able to cover their payments so far. But you can only present so many times in your community and pass the bucket, so we’re really hoping this Patreon website will be a self-sustaining effort so that for the next 2 years Alvaro and Abraham will be covered and don’t have to live every day with this hanging threat the moment you wake of “if I don’t pay this money, I go back to prison.” So, that’s what we’re trying to do with the Patreon site. https://ww.patreon.com/keeploxichafree
TFSR: Bruno, thank you so much for taking the time. I got a lot out of talking with you about this topic. Many thanks and solidarity from here!
BR: Thank you so much, I really really appreciate the space. I really appreciate the attention. There are a lot of things that you all could be covering, so I appreciate that you also thought this was important and were willing to open your space, your time for this story. Also, thank you to all of the listeners.
Again, hopefully, what we’re trying to do is to plug that Patreon website, but we also think it’s really important just to be having these conversations. A part of this is that we want to raise this money to help our comrades, but we also think that sharing their story, their testimony, their experience and also our own experiences. Making that a conversation is really an important part of building grassroots solidarity, awareness and political education. I’m really glad to be a part of the conversation!
This week William and Disembodied Voice had the chance to interview Walidah Imarisha, who is an Oregon based writer, educator, public scholar and spoken word artist about her book Angels With Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption, her 2016 book out from AK Press and IAS, which highlights three distinct experiences that are all in different degrees tangential to the realities inherent to the prison industrial complex.
This book just won the Creative Non-Fiction Award in the state of Oregon earlier in 2017. In this interview we got to touch on a wide array of topics, mostly centered on Angels With Dirty Faces but also on accountability processes and what might have to change in order for them to feel more effective, her relationship to anarchism, and some upcoming projects and appearances.
We also get to touch on the book Octavia’s Brood, a compilation of speculative fiction that Imarisha co edited with Adrienne Maree Brown, who also wrote the book Emergent Strategy.
Resist Package Restrictions for Those Incarcerated in New York State!
The thugs who run the NYS prison system (NYS DOCCS) has issued a new directive (4911A) that describes new, draconian package rules that they are testing in 3 facilities as a ‘pilot program’.
Currently, at most facilities, family and friends can drop off packages at the front desk when visiting- packages that include fresh fruit and vegetables that supplement the high carb/sugar, meager diet provided by DOCCS.
These new rules are problematic in a lot of ways including:
1) Packages can be ordered only from approved vendors.
2) Fresh fruit and vegetables are not allowed.
3) Family and friends cannot drop off packages while visiting. All packages must be shipped through the vendor.
4) Each person is limited to ordering three packages a month for him or herself and receiving three packages a month from others. Each package cannot be more than 30 pounds. Of the 30 pounds per package, only 8 pounds can be food.
5) Allowable items will be the same in all facilities. (No more local permits.)
6) There are far fewer items allowed than before and of the items that are allowed, far less variety. This includes additional restrictions on clothing.
7) The pilot rules are not clear about how books, media, religious items and literature, or other items subject to First Amendment protection will be treated. This could mean that groups like NYC Books through Bars will not be able to send free books to the 52,000 people in the prison system.
The pilot program implements an “approved venders only” package system. This means that only packages from approved vendors will be accepted. The vendors appear to be companies that specialize in shipping into prisons and jails. There are currently five approved vendors identified on the DOCCS website. This amounts to a cash grab for these companies.
The pilot program is starting at three facilities: Taconic, Greene, and Green Haven. Those facilities will stop accepting packages from non-approved vendors on
January 2, 2018.
We have to make this package directive unworkable. These new rules are cruel- eliminating fresh fruit and vegetables and creating massive profits for the vampire companies that will fill the niche.
2-Get in touch with your people in NYS Prisons and let them know about this. Inform them, send them the info. Massive non-cooperation on the part of NYS prisoners will play a huge role in this.
3- Flood the electeds with postcards. Send one to Governor Cuomo and one to Anthony Annucci, the acting commissioner of DOCCS. It costs 34 cents.
Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224
Acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci
NYS DOCCS
Building 2, State Campus
Albany, NY 12226
Some sample text:
Dear Governor Cuomo,
This holiday season is about giving, not taking away. I object to the new DOCCS package rules.
From,
(Your Name)
(Your relationship to people in prison, if applicable)
Dear Acting Commissioner Annucci,
The new DOCCS package pilot punishes innocent families. Having a loved one in prison is already expensive and difficult—the new rules make it worse. Rescind the package pilot!
From,
(Your Name)
(Your relationship to people in prison, if applicable)
4) Write a letter to both of these people (address above)
5)Call Cuomo’s office and leave a message about it. You won’t have to talk to anyone. Just leave your message. 518-474-8390
This week, I and sometimes contributor & commentator Disembodied Voice had the chance to interview Walidah Imarisha, who is an Oregon-based writer, educator, public scholar and spoken word artist, about her book Angels With Dirty Faces, which came out in 2016 `out From AI and AK Press, [and] which highlights three distinct experiences that are, in different degrees, tangential to the realities inherent to the prison-industrial complex. This book just won the creative nonfiction award in the state of Oregon earlier in 2017. In this interview, we got to touch on a wide array of topics, mostly centered on Angels With Dirty Faces but also on accountability processes, and on what might have to change in order for them to feel more effective her relationship to anarchism, and some up-coming projects and appearances. We also get to touch on the book Octavia’s Brood, a compilation of speculative fiction that Imarisha co-edited with Adriene Marie Brown, who also wrote Emergent Strategy. More about Imarisha, her work, and up coming event can be found www.walidah.com.
TFSR-William Goodenuff: So, we are here with Walidah Imarisha, author of Angels with Dirty Faces, and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood. Thank you so much for coming on to this show. Would you introduce yourself a little bit more and talk a little about what you do?
Walidah: Sure! Thanks for having me. My name’s Walidah Imarisha and I’m an educator, and a writer, and I work in a number of different areas. I see my work all tying together as trying to claim a right to the future and trying to be able to move folks toward imagining and then creating better and more just futures.
TFSR-WG: Will you talk more about your experience as an educator who is also involved in movement work, and also maybe more broadly about the role of the academy in movement?
W: Sure. I think I’ve been very lucky to teach in places and positions that have allowed me to shape and to have as much autonomy as possible around the content of my classes and the subject material. I think that intellectualism is incredibly important in movements for change. I think its important to have spaces where we are thinking about theory, and we’re thinking about larger frame works and questions. To me all intellectualism should be public intellectualism, which is, in my definition, intellectualism not in service of the powers that be, but in service of the people, and in service of creating new just worlds. And, to me, the distinction that is very important is about, “Who are you accountable to, and who is your work accountable to?” And I’m very proud to call myself a public scholar, because, to me, that means I am accountable to those communities who are marginalized, who are oppressed. I’m accountable to making sure my work reflects them, making sure my work is centered in their leadership and their resistance, and that my work inherently attempts to support changing the structures that created that oppression in the first place.
TFSR-WG: That’s really cool. Sometimes I find in far left, at least the strains of the far left that I find myself in, that there’s this kind of anti-intellectualism that happens. Do you find that that has been the case for you, or do you have a different experience with that?
W: I think I’ve seen, you know, both sides of the extremes, and I think that’s part of the problem — is that it’s extreme. So I’ve definitely seen folks who are anti-intellectualism and focused only on practice. I’ve also seen folks who have only immersed themselves in theory and are not engaged with or thinking about how that moves on the ground. And I think that both of those extremes ultimately keep us from being able to create the kind of change that we want, so there has to be a balance. And I also think it’s important, again, that intellectualism and the engagement with thinking about the future is really not only rooted in oppressed communities, but includes the imaginings of oppressed communities. So I think it’s important that we’re not just looking to public scholars to just articulate these ideas, but we’re looking to public scholars to help and hold space for communities to articulate these ideas and these imaginings for themselves.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, the acknowledgment that intellectual theory comes from so many different places and not just out of academies or whatever — though there is a lot of super useful stuff coming out of academies too. So, you’ve done a lot of lectures, and you say you’re an educator and a writer, and you wrote this book Angels with Dirty Faces a couple of years ago. Would you describe this book for anyone who hasn’t read it yet?
W: Sure. It’ Angels With Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption. It’s a creative nonfiction book that looks at the criminal legal system, at prisons, and at the idea of harm and accountability through the narrative and the stories of three people. My goal in putting the book out was to create spaces here we can have conversations about the idea of what happens when harm is done. So when there’s been harm done in communities, when folks have hurt each other, then what happens? And the book doesn’t answer that question, but what I realized in doing my work as an a prison abolitionist is that we needed to humanize those folks who are incarcerated, and also folks who have done harm, and they actually aren’t necessarily the same people, because those folks have been dehumanized. And we can’t begin to have conversations about how to heal communities when we’re imagining folks in the communities not as human beings who have, in some cases, made incredibly atrocious mistakes, but as monsters.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, that resonates a lot with me, and one of the questions that we were really interested about, is kind of this disposability mindset that the world at large seems to have for so many people, and that that’s certainly conditioned on forces of classism and racism and anti-Blackness.
W: Absolutely. I think that when you live in a capitalist society, everything becomes a commodity, including human beings, and I think that, you know, it’s very clear that, you know — and I think there`s been a lot of amazing scholarship work done about this, the connections between system of racial oppression, like slavery, and the prison system. And recognizing that the prison system is not about safety, it’s not about reducing crime – it’s about exploitation and control of potentially rebellious communities. You know, folks like Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, and Michelle Alexander have moved these conversations in the public. And so I think it’s important to have a historical and larger frame work around it, so that we can see its not just that people are being thrown away – it’s that certain folks especially are being thrown away, because they were never wanted in the first place.
TFSR-Disembodied Voice: Absolutely, yes. What you just said about that there are particular folks who tend to become dehumanized and disposed of in our society is very much true, but what I appreciated about your book and the stories that you tell in it, is that you’re really approaching it from a space where you’re talking about people…who we actually care deeply for who create harm and hurt us, and that is something that has often been an conversation in the community that I’m in, and that we’re in, with things like accountability processes and different ways of trying to address harm at the community level, that – where we don’t want to throw people away, right? And we’ll talk more about that question a little later on in the interview, but I’m curious because you mentioned prison abolitionism. What do you feel, when we talk about the end of prisons, what would need to be true of our society, in order for us to stop throwing people away?
W: Yeah. I think, you know, it’s important to talk bout what abolition is, and I think that Angela Davis has a great short book that she wrote called Abolition Democracy that’s based on the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois, and him talking about the fact that, you know, calling ourselves “prison abolitionists” is specifically and directly linking back to abolitionists who are fighting against slavery. and Du Bois was writing about slavery and said that, you know, abolition is not just the end of slavery – it is the presence of justice for those who were enslaved. It is the ability to participate fully in society, so it’s not just the tearing down; it’s actually a replacement and a building up of those folks who had for so long been exploited and brutalized and terrorized. And I think that that’s a very important and useful framing when we’re talking about prison , because when we talk about prison abolition, often folks think only of tearing down the walls. They think of an absence. And the question becomes, well then, you know, if you wanna tear down the prisons, then what? And I think that for many prison abolitionists, we believe that abolition as a mind set is about ending this carceral mentality, this idea that punishment and retribution that prisons are founded on, but it’s also about creating systems that actually focus on keeping communities whole and safe, and when harm is done, to healing those communities. And so I think it’s important to recognize that abolition is not just about destruction. It’s also about creation. And Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who is an amazing Black Feminist visionary thinker, wrote “What if abolition is a growing thing?” and I think that that idea, as abolition as growing, as a garden, as a plant, rather than as a wrecking ball, is a really powerful one.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. It seems like yeah, I – it’s hard for me to grapple with this question, super, like — what might need to be true of our society in order for us to stop throwing people away is a really huge question that I sometimes don’t really have great foot holds in — the carceral state, and capitalism, and all of these things like patriarchy, anti-blackness, misogynoir – all these things build walls between people, and you know, take the element of caring out of the human equation, which is a super huge shame. So I think approaching it like that makes a lot of sense to me.
Just to get back to the book, I was really taken with the style that the book was written in, the narrative or creative nonfiction, and I’m really interested in about the evolution of this book. Would you talk a little bit about how it changed stylistically throughout the writing process?
W: Sure. So, Angels With Dirty Faces focuses on three people stories: myself, my adopted brother Kakamia, who is currently incarcerated in CA, and James McElroy, also known as Jimmy Mac, who was a member of the Westies, which was the Irish Mob that ran Hell’s Kitchen in NewYork from the 1960s to the 1980s, and also served as hit men for the Gambino family, for John Gotti, for the (???). And the book actually began because Jimmy Mac and my brother were incarcerated in the same place and got to know each other, and Jimmy Mac had never done an interview with any journalist, but, because of my brother, he agreed to do an interview with me. And through doing that process, he, you know, was like, do you want to write my biography? And I was like yes, this would be fascinating. But as I began to write the biography, I realized that it was something that was growing. I had been doing work around prisons and justice within prisons for, you know, 20 years or more then. I couldn’t help but want to bring that into talking about Jimmy Mac to give it a framework and to be able to give a full picture of these ideas of crime, of violence, of prisons, of justice, that are so racialized, that are so much about class and gender and sexual identity, and are so much used as a method of social control. And so the book just grew from there to include my brother, to include myself, and then to include the work that I’ve done that has been a lot around Black Liberation political prisoners.
And so, I really began to realize that i think the best way to change folks’ minds is through stories. And I think that what really causes a deep shift within a person is being able to emotionally connect with someone else’s experiences, and I think that is p of the reason that this system works so hard to dehumanize those who it is scared of, because if we are not people, if we are things, then there is less of a possibility of other folks in society empathizing, connecting, and then seeing the ways that the system functions. And so I felt like sharing those stories would be an important way to create a shift. So, the creative nonfiction genre is kind of a giant snatch bag with a lot of things in it. But, you know, my book definitely — it includes statistics, it includes history, it includes analysis. It also includes personal narrative. I’m a poet, so some of the writing incorporates the aesthetic of poetics. So, it definitely is a hybrid creature. But I think that actually how we live our lives is seeing everything as connected rather than in these neat boxes.
TFSR-DV: Yea, and that is one of the most remarkable aspects of the book. I can imagine that this is something that people comment on to you frequently about it — the way you just charted that evolution of kind of talking about Jimmy Mac and then realizing that more stories needed to be included sounds very natural and organic, and yet the stories that you chose to include about yourself and your brother were highly personal, and I was wondering because, I suppose, you could have chosen to talk about some other folks who are incarcerated who you had learned about or corresponded with, but you chose to speak about yourself and your relationship with your brother and your family. I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the choice not just to widen the scope of the book from one story to multiple stories, but specifically to those stories.
W: Sure. Well, as I was working on what I thought would by the biography for Jimmy Mac, I came to feel that I was really connected with Jimmy and with this process. I mean, the reason Jimmy spoke to me was because of my brother and, you know, Jimmy was calling me his niece, and said I was an “ Westie,” which I was like, “I don’t know that I want to do that, but thank you,” um, [laughter] and I felt like I was very much a part of the story. I think that any idea of objectivity is a fallacy in human beings. I don’t think that you can be objective. And I think that folks who say they’re being objective in their writing, in their creation, in their education, teaching — they are either lying to you or to themselves. I think that the most principled things is to be clear about your subjectivity, and to be clear about how your subjectivity affects the information you’re presenting, and then to allow the reader to engage with it on that level.
And so that’s what I began doing. And as I was doing that, I was realizing that these conversations around harm, around crime, around violence, were things that I was also grappling with personally. And so, you know, my brother was arrested and tried — at the age of 16 tried as an adult and has served almost 30 years in prison at this point. And then, you know, I had actually gone through a failed accountability – a community accountability process with my partner at the time who had sexually assaulted me. And really recognizing that these stories are not stories that are easy to discuss, these are not stories that there is a neat simple ending that can be created, but these complicated, messy, difficult, painful stories are the ones we have to talk about, because if we don’t talk about them, then any conception of justice we’re creating will eventually derail when we get to places like that. And so I think that, for me, we have to go into those places that make us uncomfortable, that make us scared, that are painful, to be able to sit with the complexities and contradictions of humanity. And I think that’s the only way that we can build new systems of justice, new processes to address harm, new ways to keep communities safe, that will actually both be effective and will embody the values and principles that we have and that we want for this new world.
TFSR-WG: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more, and I think that that point just can not be overstated. There’s no amount of times when, you know, having that information will ever be too much.
TFSR-DV: I wanted to say that one of the things that really challenged me in the book, when you talk about sitting with that complexity, you speak about how — I’m sorry, can you pronounce your brother’s name for me again?
W: Kay-kuh-mee-ah.
TFSR-DV: Kakamia. That you talk about how Kakamia really resisted becoming an informant, and really didn’t want to play that role, but eventually did, and that was really painful for him, it was difficult for you, and it really made me sit with the complexity of that because I think in the circles that I run in there’s like this anti-snitch kind of thing, and it’s this very knee jerk, kind of all of nothing kind of approach that can just be so harsh toward people who do that. And on the one hand, yes, it’s a decision that we can condemn, but on the other hand, it’s also — you capture the horrible choice of that so well in the book. So I just wanted to say that, just for me, that was a moment where the story really forced me to sit with that complexity, so… thank you [laughs].
W: Yeah…thanks. I think that I just wanna be, I mean, Kakamia is anti-snitch, and, you know, hates himself for debriefing. And also probably wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t debriefed. And that both of those things that are in seeming contradiction with each other is absolutely true. I think it is important to take in to account context. I think that one of the things, one of the many things that is so flawed with the criminal legal system is the idea that people fit neatly in to categories, and human interactions fit neatly into categories, and so we can predict what needs to happen when a situation occurs. And I think one of the things that’s really powerful about the idea of transformative justice, which is you know, prison abolition is a part of that, is the idea of saying, as we are living the values we have for this new world, how are we respecting that every human interaction is different, is unique, and how are we responding to that and creating situations that address that moment? I think that’s on e of the things that is so both challenging and powerful about transformative justice — is that it accepts that each situation is unique.
TFSR-WG: I’m wondering about what the reception of the book has been, either critically or, if you’ve done book events, how have people received the book?
W: Well, the reception has been really good for the book. I think I definitely was very nervous about putting out the book for many reasons. Because the book is so deeply personally for myself, and for Kakamia and for Jimmy Mac, as well as other folks who’s stories are partially told in the book, I wanted it to be as honest as possible, and I tried to be honest and accountable to those folks– Jimmy & Kakamia read different versions of the book, they got to see the book and give feed back on it. I felt that was very important, especially writing about folks who are incarcerated, where so much has been taken from them. I did not want tot take their stories and their experiences from them as well, and use it to my own end. So, even though I worked to try and make the book as honest and as real as possible, that also meant that all of us are kind of laid open for the world, which was you know a very scary idea, I think. And the response to the book has been really incredible and powerful. It’s – I think what has honored me the most is when folks who’s family members are incarcerated, people who have been incarcerated, and folks who are survivors of sexual assault all say they felt like they saw themselves and their experiences reflected accurately in the book, and that the complexities of that which they live with every day, was something that was in the book. And that to me was the highest honor that I could receive in relationship to the book.
But the response has been powerful from all sectors and I won the creative nonfiction award for the Oregon Book Awards in 2017, and that has kind of given a new round of interest in the book, so it’s been really powerful to use the book as a way to have conversations in communities, and as a way for communities to begin having that dialogue of saying, “Well than, what do we do? And what can we create now that can be ready when harm happens in our community?”
TFSR-WG: Definitely. And congratulations for the award, and speaking for my own self, one of the most powerful aspects of the book, which seemingly I’m not alone in this, the fact that you name all these really difficult complexities that are just inherent to human interactions, and you know, the question of snitching and the question of the accountability process — those were really, really powerful, powerful moments, and like very, very real. And I’d love to hear, has — so the reception has been good, but I’d love to hear, has Kakamia or Mac’s or even your situation, has have there been any material changes to any of y’all’s lives or situations because of Angels With Dirty Faces?
W: Well, unfortunately, Jimmy Mac passed away before the book came out so, it is one of my biggest regrets that he didn’t get to see the book out in the world. And I worked hard with Kakamia – because he is still trying to make parole and get out of prison – to, you know, protect his identity as much as possible around that. But he has shared the book with folks who are also incarcerated with him and that has meant a lot to me because the book is very personal about him as well, and he has felt comfortable enough to hare that with folks who have all given positive feedback to him about it.
TFSR-WG: That’s awesome. You touched on accountability processes several times and I – they are kind of the thorn in, you know, kind of a thorn in the side of the far left in a way, and they probably don’t work as well as we like to believe that they work. I was wondering if you cold reflect on accountability processes a little bit and kind of talk a little bit about – can we boil down the failure of these processes to individual flaws or is there some sort of structural component, structural aspect to their consistently lukewarm results?
W: I think one of the biggest things, and I talk about this in Angels, I think a lot of the problem is what we consider to be failure and success, and how we are judging community accountability process, especially when it has been serious harm that’s been done around, especially intimate violence and sexual violence. And I think that we have the idea that has been, is very much a product of this capitalist society that we can find a quick fix for these things. And that we can create something that ,at the end of the day, everyone will feel healed and will feel whole and will move on from. And I think that those are fairly unrealistic expectations. I think that there is no quick fix to healing, and there is no quick fix in the process of transformation. And so, for me, what I have really come to think about is, are the individuals and is the community, at the “end” of the accountability process, healed enough that they are able to continue their healing and growth and accountability in a less formal structure afterwards? And I think that if that was one of the criteria we may see accountability processes very different.
But I think that we have to begin shifting the ways we talk about harm that is done, the ways we talk about who is doing this harm, because I think that, you know, and I think that things like the #MeToo campaign, and this response to individual men who have committed sexual assault and sexual harassment, is you know, we have to see that it is pervasive, that it is something that happens. We often talk about how many women and gender nonconforming folks have experienced sexual assault, but we don’t talk about how many folks are assaulting, right? And I think that we have to talk about that, because that is where it is most awful and uncomfortable, to think about people in our lives, people we care about, people we respect, who are committing this harm. And yet, that is the case. And if we don’t talk about that, we cant begin to actually transform our communities. And then we just rely on these individual instances and our response to them, which will continue to feel inadequate, unless we really begin to shift how we’re thinking about it, and have these larger conversations about the culture, and the pervasiveness of intimate violence and sexual violence.
TFSR-WG:: You touched on #MeToo and other initiatives which highlight survivors of sexual assault. I was wondering if you had any more reflections on how much they break from normative narratives, or alternatively do they uphold narratives, or is that not really a helpful framework for thinking about that?
W: I mean, I’m of the mind — my co-editor for Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne Maree Brown, talks a lot about growing possibilities, and so I think that there is no one right way to do things. I think that there are actually, – we live in a quantum universe so there infinite possibilities, and to me, infinite ways to create justice. And so for me, as long as folks are holding on to their values and principles, I think that the work can and should move in many different ways. So when we do Octavia’s Brood, we do workshops, and we ask folks to say practicing “yes, and” rather than “no, but.” I think that we live in a ‘no, but…” society. There is one right answer, so all the rest must be wrong, right? This dichotomy which creates hierarchy. Rather than saying yes and all these things can be true and therefore there is no hierarchy, it’s all decentralized, its all here and accessible. So, you know, I am thankful for the campaign, I am thankful to the Black woman visionary who created and held that campaign for 10 years before it’s — this kind of mainstream resurrection . I’ve seen many positive things come out of the campaign and I think there are great conversations that are happening, and I think that to me, it is about capturing moments. And so I think that this is a moment that we can be using to ask these bigger questions so that it becomes about, “How do we fundamentally change a rape culture. how do we fundamentally shift the ways that institutionalized oppression have been ingrained in us, and how do we envision and begin to build something different?”
TFSR-DV: Absolutely, and I’m not surprised that in speaking with you, that I hear you asking all these questions, and really posing kind of how you think about the world in question form, because that really came across in book, in a way, that it really feels like the whole book is about posing questions. And certainly for folks who are familiar with your other work, that also questions is very much a through-line in the way that you do your work. And to us, we felt that questioning and kind of like seeking out more conversation and not seeking closure is very much like an intrinsically anarchist thing, and we wondering if you would talk a little bit about your relationship to anarchism.
W: Sure. Yeah, I definitely think that asking questions is incredibly important for may reasons. And you know — a number of folks have been disappointed by the book, because they are like, “You just asked questions, you didn’t give us the answers.” [Laughs] Like, boo, if I had the answers, I would have done something along time ago. But I also think even more importantly than that is the understanding and importance, and the value of collectively, and recognize that no one person is going to have the answers, and anyone who says they have all the answers is lying to themselves or to you. And I think that the recognition that is part of that collective process that will ultimately help us build different futures, and come up with new questions. Because this movement for change, there’s no end point. It’s a continual revolution in the fundamental sense of that word, in continual movement. And you know, I think some folks could feel depressed about that. I choose to feel incredibly hopeful, because it means that we continually have the opportunity to ask ourselves is this the world we want to live in? And we continually have the opportunity to re-envision the part, as we grow, that we also want to grow.
And so, to me, those are a lot of my principles and values, and I do believe that the idea of anarchism can be useful and helpful. I identify politically closest as an anarchist. I also think that to me, if a label is useful in encapsulating ideas in a way that helps move work forward, then use them, and if it doesn’t, then keep the values and principles and move on. And also, as a Black woman, I want to recognize that a lot of what we call anarchism, which we think of as being created by these old european white dudes, are actually principles and values and ways of being and ways of knowing that communities of color have practiced for eternity. And so, I also think it important to acknowledge and recognize that this information is not something that is separate from oppressed peoples, it is something that actually comes from oppressed peoples and that, in may, ways it’s about time traveling and having those values and principles help us to inform and envision different futures.
TFSR-DV: I love what you said about the label being useful only if it moves the work forward, and that actually reminds me a lot of things that I’ve heard people, particularly who do prisoner support, say, because it is a space where you’re offering solidarity and you’re offering support, and sometimes you’re offering it to people who aren’t ideologically on the exact same page as you, and it becomes an evolution of your relationship to that person and the reasons that you’re in relationship to them. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, beyond just about yr brother, and how you write about, your experience with supporting incarcerated people, and maybe, like, your best practices around that.
W: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know that I have a checklist, but I think for me I have been incredibly lucky and honored to learn and be mentored by many different folks who have been and are incarcerated, and to work in solidarity and as compañeros with those folks. I would not be the person I am as a human, as someone involved in change or as an artist without the mentorship and guidance and leadership of folks who are incarcerated. So for me, I think it’s important to see folks who are incarcerated who you are engaging with as, A. Part of the community, because they absolutely are; and B. As folks you are working with rather than helping or working for. I think that a lot of folks who get involved come in and are often white folks. They come in with a savior mentality, and folks who are incarcerated and more, broadly, POC don’t need saviors, they need allies.
Because some of the most courageous, innovative, incredible organizing work is happening in prisons, behind these walls, in some of the worst conditions possible. And we on the outside have so much to learn, and we need the wisdom – we need that leadership, we need that ingenuity and creativity, and bravery. And so, I think it’s important to come from that perspective, rather than coming from the perspective of, “I’m doing this to help this person,” rather than coming from the perspective of saying, “I’m doing this because we are both in shared struggle, and this person has a lot to share with me about that, and I want to be in communion and in conversation with this person to be able to make our communities and make our world better.”
TFSR-DV: Absolutely, thank you for that.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, definitely. Perhaps to veer off topic just for a moment, you’ve mentioned Octvia’s Brood throughout this interview, and this is an anthology of speculative fiction that you co-edited. Will you talk little bit about how this project compared to Angels With Dirty Faces? Like similarities, differences..?
W: So Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements is an anthology of fantastical writing by activists, organizers, and change-makers. So it’s science fiction created by people doing work on the ground to envision different futures. My co-editor, Adrienne, and I created the anthology with the premise that all organizing is science fiction, and therefore all organizers are creators and visionaries of science fiction, because these worlds — they are trying to imagine a world without borders, without prisons, a world without sexual violence — that is science fiction, because we haven’t seen that world. But also recognize we need imaginative spaces like science fiction, where we can explore beyond the boundaries of what we’re told is possible, because we cant build what we can’t imagine. Imagination is the first step to new worlds.
So we have to have spaces where we can throw out what we’ve been told is realistic and possible, and instead start with the question, “What do we want? What is a world we want to live in? “ And I’ve – yeah. This project has been incredible. It’s something – we spent five yeas putting the book out, and it is something that has helped me be more visionary in my life and in my work, and I very much see Angels With Dirty Faces as connected with that. It was funny because I worked on Angels With Dirty Faces for ten years. So I started it well before we even had the idea of Octavia’s Brood, but it came out after Octavia’s Brood. And so, when I would tell people, “I have a book coming out,” and they would be like, “Oh, is it science fiction?” and I would be like, “No, it’s a creative nonfiction book about prisons and harm,” and they’re like, “Whoa, that’s really different.” I’m like, “Is it?” [laughter]. Because in my mind, again, they’re intimately connected because the reason I think it’s important to put Angels With Dirty Faces is to create the space so that we can imagine diff futures. And to me, you know, Angels With Dirty Faces is about helping to cultivate the values that will allow us to build a different world. And so for me, all of my work is connected. And I understand why other folks are like “You just jump around a lot,” but I feel strongly that, I’ve hoped that my work is able to embody sort of a visionary ethos and aesthetic that allows to create space for more possibilities, as my co-editor Adrienne says.
TFSR-WG: That’s so excellent. You mentioned you write poetry. do you write speculative fiction as well?
W: I do, yes. And I write science fiction poetry as well.
TFSR-WG: Excellent. How can people get their hands on that?
W: I’m still working on it. So I’m working on a book of science fiction poetry that is called Tubman’s Uncertainty Principle and looks at Black women’s liberation movements through the lens of quantum physics. [laughter] So nerdy. I do love the project because when I tell people, I find my folks real quick. Cause most people’s reaction is “Um, what now?” But the folks like you who are like [audible gasp] [laughter] — there my people are. [inaudible due to laughter] So I’m working on that, and I’ve been working on some science fiction short stories and projects as well, so I have some sci-fi stories that have been put out in various places, but I’m still sort of working on putting out more work on that. But right now, my main project is actually a nonfiction historical book on Oregon Black history, because I live in Oregon. So yet again, you’re jumping to something new and I’m like, I don’t really see it a being different, but I feel you.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, for sure. That all sounds super super exciting. I remember seeing just a YouTube talk that you did, or a talk on YouTube that you did about the racist history of Oregon and I definitely learned a lot. I think you did it anywhere between 3 and 5 years ago, or something like that, and I got a lot out of it.
Those are all of the questions that we had. Is there anything else you wanted to add a a part of this interview?
W: I don’t think so.
TFSR-WG: Well, Walidah Imarisha, thank you so much for coming on to this show for an extremely thought-provoking and incisive interview. Yeah, thank you so much for your time, and your energy, and for this book you’ve written. It’s been great to have you on.
W: Well, thanks so much for having me, and for creating spaces to have these conversations. There aren’t enough, so I’m thankful for the space that y’all are holding.
TFSR-WG: Yeah, absolutely.
TFSR-DV: It’s been wonderful.
W: Thank you.
TFSR-WG: Thanks for listening to our interview with Walidah Imarisha. Again, more can be found from er at www.walidah.com
This week, we share a conversation that Bursts had with Betsy Raasch-Gilman. Betsy is a lifelong Quaker, feminist and anti-capitalist. She talks about her experiences organizing as an anarchist during the Cold War with Movement for a New Society, difficulties of critiquing capitalism within the peace movement, anti-nuke organizing, modeling consensus and affinity group organizing, alternative and cooperative models, attempting to ground organizing in anti-racism, separatism, organizing with the Marxist Left and more. Later in the conversation, Betsy talks about her engagement in the RNC Welcoming Committee against the 2008 Twin Cities Republican National Convention, the conspiracy trial that she almost got roped into, security culture and police spies and what she’s excited about now in the current terrain.
TFSR: We’re speaking with Betsy Rasch Gilman, a longtime anarchist from St. Paul. We decided to chat about being an anarchist during periods of low time in US anarchism. We’ll cover a lot more during this conversation. But thank you very much for taking the time to chat, Betsy.
Betsy: Delighted.
TFSR: Can you talk a bit about your upbringing? Were you a red– or black-diaper baby? Did you have any religious upbringing that might have influenced you?
B: Yeah, I was actually a pink-diaper baby. My mother identified as a socialist at that time. She now identifies as a green, but I was brought up with the idea that socialism was a perfectly acceptable political philosophy. That was really a foundational piece for me. That was in a time when to be called a communist or a socialist was– It was a dirty word. It was a derogatory label. So the fact that my mother was willing to say she was a socialist was pretty important to me. As for my religious background, my parents were Quakers, they had worked in a Quaker work camp before I was born. But there was no Quaker Meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota when I grew up. So they sent me to the Unitarian Church instead, and the Unitarian seemed great to me, but as soon as there was a Quaker Meeting available to go, I started going to Quaker meetings. I’m still a practicing Quaker.
TFSR: A lot of listeners may not have familiarity with Quakers. Can you talk about what the tradition is, where it comes from, and how it overlaps – because it seems to really overlap with a lot of very conscious political activity, not that there’s a specific tendency to it, but that there’s an engagement in this world that’s really important to it?
B: That’s right. Quakers are Christians, liberal Protestant Christians. Quakers do have a real orientation towards social justice and social service. It’s a historic peace church. Quakers are pacifists, by and large. The exception to all these rules I’m telling you was Richard Nixon.
TFSR: No idea. Whoa!
B: He comes from a branch of Quakerism, that is of the evangelical variety of Christianity. He was a Quaker, embarrassingly enough to the rest of us. But we often engage in issues of war and peace, racial justice, and equality of women and female-bodied people to male-bodied people. Justice issues are just right across the board. We were on the cutting edge of Protestants who would marry gay and lesbian couples before it was legal to do so. Quakers pride themselves on this stuff. The social engagement varies from one location to another in one congregation. We call them meetings actually, not congregations, we use different language than most Christian churches do. But it varies a lot from one location to another. But I belong to the most progressive, the most politically liberal branch of Quakers. The little factoid about us is we worship in silence. So there’s no prepared ministry. Occasionally somebody will speak out of the silence when they feel like they have something to say that might be of interest and use to the rest of the group. But we don’t have paid ministry. So in my branch of the denomination, others do it differently.
TFSR: Thank you. So you became involved in the Movement for a New Society in the 1970s? What were this network and its vision for revolutionary change?
B: The Movement for a New Society was a network of individuals and groups that wanted to pick up from the end of the Vietnam War protests, as the Vietnam War was winding down and in the wake of the actual government quashing of the civil rights movement, the repression of the civil rights movement, activists who wanted to continue the work on into the future. And also who were informed by the publication of a book, which is not usually remembered now, but it was called Limits to Growth. It was a study about the ecological damage that industrial society is doing to the planet. Basically, it put out that capitalism is limited by the amount of exploitation that they can do on the planet. So there are limits to growth. Capitalism is really based upon the economic growth of expansion.
So those threads – the anti-war thread, the civil rights or social, racial equality thread, the environmental thread, and feminism were another big piece of the MNS. It got started in the very early 1970’s, and the white feminist movement was very strong at that point, and MNS incorporated a lot of things from the feminist movement, also from the gay rights struggle. Stonewall was in 1968, so the gay rights struggle was very much in full swing when MNS began. So, we incorporated a bunch of different strands, and we incorporated anarchism. MNS was anti-capitalist, I think, is what we really can say. Some of us were more anarchist in orientation, and some of us were more socialist in orientation. But we were definitely anti-capitalists. We saw these six overarching realities, as we called them, which I’m not sure I can name anymore. But capitalism was one of them, patriarchy was another, racial hatred was another – things that we had to address at the same time in order to do what we wanted to do, which was to overthrow the United States government. We wanted to do that through non-violence. So it was a very ambitious undertaking.
In our own defense, I can say, I mean, you might listen to that and think “Were these people nuts or what?”, but I want to say that the times were very different in the early 1970’s, and really, throughout the 70’s. It’s very common now to talk about the 60’s as being a time of real turmoil, and it was. The 1970’s, though, was a time of really exploding political growth and multiplying efforts to change the very fabric of US society and the economy. So the 1970’s were not so much turbulent, but a really productive time. A time when it was easy to be hopeful. I recently reread a book that was published in the mid-70’s by Marge Piercey called Woman on the Edge of Time.
TFSR: Oh, it’s so good. That’s one of my favorite novels.
B: I was really struck, it was my third time reading it. But rereading it now, I thought “Wow”. She seemed so hopeful about the possibilities that this utopian society of the future could be pretty much on the verge of just mopping up the last bit of resistance. I can’t remember the year she said at the end, but it was like 2050, or something like that. I thought, “Whoa, that is a very optimistic view of the world and one that I probably subscribed to at the time that Piercey was writing.” It was interesting to look back on that and say, “Ha, it looked easier then.”
So, MSN, one of the things that I’m rather fond of saying is that generally, as a whole, we mistook a clear vision for a short distance. We were pretty clear about the world we wanted to live in, but we were way optimistic about how quickly that would happen. As I said, it was a very ambitious program of completely overthrowing the United States government, and oh, by the way, patriarchy and the oh, by the way, militarism, and oh, by the way, capitalism, and all the rest of the things that form the repressive nature of our society still today. That was Movement for New Society, we were small groups of people scattered throughout the country. We had connections with folks and members in other parts of the world, too, primarily Southeast Asia and Canada, wo we were somewhat international.
We had much more influence because we had a very active program of training. We worked up a program of training in social change skills. We would have weekend workshops that were an introduction to Movement for New Society, primarily in Philadelphia. But then also, two-week training programs for people who wanted to learn the skills of social activism in a living way, people mostly came to Philadelphia for those training programs. There was a year-long training program as well, for people who would move to Philly, find jobs, move into a communal household in Philly, and just devote themselves to that project for a year. We had a lot of influence, an outsized influence for the number of people we were, which was really a fairly small group. I don’t think we’ve probably had more than 200 officially, at any given time.
TFSR: That really is surprising considering how big of an impact the activities that you all engaged with were.
B: Yeah. The other piece of it was that as we had a network that had branches around the country, we spread issues through the issues that we worked on in one place, and we would spread those issues to another place. Since we had those connections with one another, these spark-plug people all over the country were participating in the same movements and spreading the influence that way as well.
TFSR: You had mentioned that a lot of elements within the MNS were anarchist, and you’ve described yourself as one. When did you start describing yourself as an anarchist? Who and what influenced or inspired you to do that?
B: I was thinking about that recently. While I was in MNS, one of the things I did early on was to participate in a study group, which was a self-run study group, we looked at different political philosophies. A small group of us got together, and each of us would read a small chunk of a book or a chapter and bring it back. We read different things, and we’d bring back a little description of what it was we had read so that we could cover more ground together than we could cover alone. The study group had the philosophies of anarchism, socialism, feminism, and ecology – those were the four ones that we looked at. That’s when I really began to understand what anarchism was. One of the books that we read, and I still have on my shelf, was called The Anarchist Collectives. It was a compilation edited by Sam Dolgoff with an introduction by Murray Bookchin, it was about the Spanish anarchist collectives in the Spanish war. That was really foundational to my understanding of how we might organize our society in the future. I resonated with the anarchist vision. I never felt really antagonistic towards a socialist vision, but boy, if I was going to put my effort into something, it would be the more anarchist combination of worker-managed economy and neighborhood or geographically based neighborhood organizations that would run social life and relationships. Later we put that together also with a vision of ecological bioregions within the North American continent, and the possibility of breaking down the structure of the United States into these bioregions so that the economy, which is based on the geology and the biology of an area would be– We might wind up with seven or eight smaller social-ecological groupings, where these worker-run collectives and neighborhood-run collectives could work on a smaller scale. So that we would not have the large nation-states of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but rather than we would be working on making decisions based on the bioregion that we happen to be in, and what was good for the planet, and how we could sustain ourselves within that physical area. Those were some of the pieces that formed my understanding of anarchism and where I got my introduction, where I got my start.
I should also say that in the Movement for New Society, we probably put more attention as a group, as a whole into defining feminism and our relationship to feminism and how feminism informed all of us, and what we did. This is the context of the time that the feminist movement was very strong, the anarchist and socialist movements were not as strong. Partly because of the stigma that was attached to anything that could be labeled socialist, or, God forbid, communist. The left was very allergic to the idea of any critique of capitalism. That applied a little bit to people within MNS, that there’s just a certain “Oh, I don’t want to mess with that area,” but feminism that I can really relate to, that I can really understand. It’s a very clear and very important piece of our political development, our political program, we have a lot of unlearning to do in order to create the society that we want to live in, and that feminism is a big piece of the remaking of our world. In practice – I think it was 18 years that Movement for the Society Existed – we probably put more effort into defining and working with feminism than we did with either socialism or anarchism.
TFSR: There are a lot of different approaches to feminism that people come with, as you mentioned before “white feminism”, and you could pose that with black feminism or POC feminism that specifically takes in either specific people’s experiences with the intersections – intersectionality, I think, was a new thing at this time that was really being introduced into activist lingo – intersections of race and class and gender and region and all these things. Even if you were mostly talking about feminism, what seemed to correlate between an anti-capitalist approach and a feminist approach?
B: The exploitation of the planet was a big one, that the planet is treated like our female body is treated, and that patriarchy violates female bodies and the planet regularly. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind. Within MNS, we grappled a lot with lesbian separatism. Movement for New Society was an all-gender-welcome organization and we also recognize that the most creative, the most radical, and the most visionary work came from lesbians. Many other women who were involved in Movement for New Society identified as lesbian. It received some critique and also some curiosity from the lesbian separatist women of the feminist movement at the time. “You know, why are you working in an organization with men?” But then on the other hand “Really? Some men will take feminism seriously?”
I remember a specific example of that, we had a group of lesbians who were organizing a march in the Twin Cities called The Women Against Violence Against Women march in 1979. Some of the women from MNS were talking about the possibility of men heckling the march, the march was planned for late at night through a district that had a lot of porn movie theaters, and bookstores that sold pornography. So the women in the planning group were saying, “We’re going to be harassed by these men”, and one of the feminist women said, “Well, I think I know some men who would act as marshals, they would talk to other men and keep men from disrupting our march either because they thought they were supportive, and they’d marched in front of us and guard us, we don’t want that. That’s not the idea of the march. But we have some men who would be on our side, and who would work with other men to make the march go smoothly and try to keep men in check. And it was like “You do, you know some men like that? Are you kidding me?” That was the reaction from women who were not part of the Movement for New Society that they didn’t really trust that there were men who took feminism seriously, and who would pitch in to make a success specifically a woman-run, woman-centered march. So that was part of it that the possibility of a group working together across genders for the eradication of patriarchy was inspirational too. We got some grudging respect as well for the possibility of tackling that problem. I’ve gotten way off the topic of anarchism, that was a tension that we worked with within MNS, around lesbian separatism, and the critique of what we were doing from that angle, but also the curiosity about it, too.
TFSR: Just to get further away from the tendency. That makes me think of how much you were carrying influences over from the Civil Rights Movement when you did have white people putting their bodies on the line in solidarity with black folks and people of color, who didn’t get to choose to put their lives on the line to go vote or to go participate or to go to the store or use public transport or whatever. That thing shows you what a future can look like and that a future can look different.
B: This tension over separatism was also a carryover from the Civil Rights Movement, because part of the Black, struggle for liberation, really didn’t want white participation and certainly didn’t want any white leadership. Like, if you white people get in here, you’re just going to screw everything up, let us alone. So there was a very definite Black separatist movement in the late 1970s. There was a definite lesbian separatist movement in the early 1980s too.
TFSR: The approach that Movement for New Society was taking by identifying these specific elements within society that are problematic, and the people or the things that are affected by those negative things and organizing against those by holding those things together, it seems to me to counterpose the Marxist or the Maoist approach, which is generally that there’s a central revolutionary identity or central struggle that everything else has to be put to the wayside of the back-burner for, whether it be the gender issue of the lesbian separatists, or the race issue of some of the Black Liberation separatists, or the Marxian workerist approach that only views the worker identity as the important and revolutionary position to take.
B: Exactly, we were very consciously countering that reductionist approach. Because when we talked about our six overarching realities, we said, “These are all true, and we need to address them all.” And we’re not going to say, “One is primary and the others are secondary.”
TFSR: Yeah, that’s fascinating. That must have been a point of contention in the political world at that time.
B: Yeah, the Marxists didn’t like that very much.
TFSR: But it still is, too. People get their blinders on. It’s also hard when you look through history and you hear about struggles for change, or revolutionary struggles being co-opted by other sides, as opposed to people coming together necessarily and finding a balance, where you can hold all these things at the same time and agree they’re all wrong. It doesn’t have to be some sort of hierarchy of who is missing out the most based on the terribleness of our society.
B: I still believe that that’s a non-starter. It’s a way that we keep ourselves being less powerful than we could be.
TFSR: In this period, as the Cold War burned, the largest anti-capitalist tendencies were the statists, I imagine with people looking to the Warsaw Pact nation, or other state-capitalist ventures calling themselves communist as the natural alternatives to the imperialism at home and abroad in the USA, with nuclear war looming very closely overhead. Wonder what that reminds me of? Can you talk about what organizing during this period as an anarchist was like?
B: You mentioned nuclear war, one of the places where the Movement for New Society put a lot of energy was into the Peace Movement that bloomed under Reagan. President Reagan came into office in 1981 and immediately started a really dangerous program of saber-rattling with the Soviet Union, which existed at that time. It scared a lot of us. That scared us a lot. There was a large Peace Movement as a reaction to this. It was also international. People in Germany, Great Britain, and Italy also reacted because actually, the nukes were stationed on their soil, the US had some but the US was putting its nukes over in Germany and over in France, and in Italy, and they didn’t like that idea very much they were going to be first out if there was a nuclear exchange. So it was an international Peace Movement at that time. I remember that, within Movement for New Society, we tried to influence that Peace Movement in the direction of a critique of capitalism. But if I began to talk about having a critique of capitalism as being a piece of the militaristic, jingoistic thing that was going on, other passive peace-oriented people would say, “Oh, well, we can’t talk about that. We can’t really go there, we were not communist.” It was easier to make a connection with the abuse of the environment by the military, it was certainly easier to make connections about the military’s patriarchal foundations. It was harder to make the connections between the military’s effect on our economy and the fact that the whole economy of the United States is still structured on the military. It’s a very large chunk of our economy, was then, and still is. Reagan was busy making it a bigger and bigger piece of the economy. It was hard to bring those things up and say, “Look, capitalism is a problem. It’s a part of the problem.” Generally speaking, when I brought those that critique up, I got shut down because people were still so nervous about being labeled communist. The Soviet Union existed, and it was the big enemy. And other statists based on the Marxist fringe– Well, I shouldn’t say fringe, the Marxist brothers and sisters had the same difficulty even worse than mine. There was a group called the American Soviet Friendship Committee that I worked with in the anti-nuclear movement, or nuclear weapons movement. They were pretty much all old communists. They couldn’t say that they were communists. They’d said they were the American Soviet Friendship Committee. But basically, they were all old communists. So there was a lot of that disguising an anti-capitalist critique in order to have some sway in the larger liberal leftist movement.
I just should flag here that I’m really talking about a very white context here, that the Peace Movement was really white. It might have been different if it had been more diverse racially and ethnically. But it was not, and to organize from an anarchist point of view was tough because of this real allergy to anything that critiqued capitalism. Now, jumping ahead a bit, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, I didn’t see the ripple effect immediately. But within the next five years, it was much more possible to say, “Look, I think capitalism is really a problem” and not get shut down by other leftists that I was trying to work with. Easier to say, “What the problem is, it’s right there. It’s capitalism.” And people were becoming much more receptive to that by the time that the US invaded Iraq, Desert Storm, specifically, I remember in the organizing against that invasion, people were definitely willing to entertain that capitalism was a problem. But that was also the beginning of globalization, the push for corporate globalization. There was a guy named H. Ross Perot who ran for president in 1992 with a well a critique of globalization. After Perot had begun to raise questions about what corporate globalization would do to us, it became much more possible to talk about the impacts of corporate capitalism and to develop a critique of that and have people say, “Yeah, you’re right, certainly, it’s not doing the planet any favors either.”
I would say that during the whole period of the 1980’s into the early 1990’s, it was awfully hard to come out and say, “Okay, let’s organize for an anarchist future.” It really couldn’t be done. Personally, as an activist, I think Movement for New Society laid itself down in 1988. So we didn’t survive the 80’s. But others within MNS had the same basic approach that we would organize with what was available. So that was often the Peace Movement, the anti-war movement, social justice movements, and increasing movements throughout the 80’s for racial equality and feminism. The women’s movement really lasted right into the mid-late 80’s as a movement. So we went with what we could, where we could actually make some headway or some progress. I never forgot that I was working towards a future that would be basically an anarchist collectivist future. I kept bringing it up when it was possible to do and sometimes surprised people by saying, “Well, this is the future I want to live in. I do not want to have the United States as an entity even exist any longer” and lay out my future. I remember somebody saying, “You really thought about this?” I said, “Yeah. I thought about this quite a bit, actually. So the anarchist ideals really informed me, they were in the background of everything I was trying to do. But to organize around the anarchism was tough until the Soviet Union fell apart. It got more possible through the 1990’s.
TFSR: Some of the ideas and actions that the Movement for New Society is remembered for include its application of non-violent direct action and spokes council models and the forming and actions related to the resistance against the Nixon administration’s project of proliferating nuclear power plants like little bunnies around the country, like little explosive bunnies. Can you talk about the role of the Movement for New Society that it played in this period and the role of resisting nuclear power plants alongside resisting the nuclear weapons and war that you mentioned earlier?
B: I think in many ways the anti-nuclear movement, beginning with the occupation of the power plant that was under construction at Seabrook, New Hampshire, that was a trigger point for the anti-nuclear movement generally. Part of why it did explode nationwide after Seabrook was because of the Movement for New Society. The authorities at Seabrook did a very stupid thing. They arrested 1,400 people who were occupying this site where the power plant was supposed to be built and locked them up in seven national guard armories for two weeks while they tried to process all these arrestees. Well, for two weeks, they had a little mini-training camp inside each of these armories.
TFSR: Siberia, this is where the Tsar went know, right?
B: Exactly. Movement for New Society activists were in probably most of those armories organizing workshops, facilitating spokes council meetings, and working to resolve– It wasn’t pleasant being locked up in those armories, people got into each other’s faces. But MNS folks, we tried to be people who could handle conflict in a creative fashion, rather than just trying to shut it down or tell people just don’t talk to each other or things like that. We tried to actually address what could we learn from the conflict we’re having. That was just a nice little training camp that the authorities provided.
When people were released from those armories, they went back home to wherever they’d come from and they started their own anti-nuclear power movements. It was the Clamshell Alliance that occupied the Seabrook plant, but all these little alliances started springing up all over the country. In my area, there was the Northern Thunder Alliance, and there was the Northern Sun Alliance. There was a one around Chicago that I’m blanking on right now. A bunch of these anti-nuclear alliances got started all with the same basic spokes council structure, the same basic grassroots up the non-hierarchical structure of how to organize a movement, and all these alliances staying in touch with what each other was doing and from time to time helping out. Diablo Canyon was another big issue and nuclear power plant built on an earthquake fault if you can believe that.
TFSR: A really good idea.
B: So when Diablo Canyon needed bodies, they could call on the alliances in other parts of the country to come in and help to conduct their actions. Movement for New Society was never very large in numbers. But because of this training aspect of what we did, we had a big impact, especially on the anti-nuclear movement. The same thing was true then for the Nuclear Freeze Movement that was built during the 1980s. Also, the Pledge of Resistance to the US invasion of Nicaragua was another place where the Movement for New Society participated in this way of trying to network together things that were happening all over the place, and also provide training to people who are coming into activism for the first time or new to activism. Sometimes we joked that process was our most important product because a lot of it had to do with just how do we work together? How do we treat each other? How do we make decisions together? How do we be democratic, radically democratic? And a lot of that was informed by anarchism, the idea that we don’t want a central committee making the decisions for us. We want to make the decisions ourselves. In order to do that, we have to have processes that will allow as many voices to be heard as we can and yet be able to make clear decisions and be able to move forward, not get ourselves bogged down and just rehearsing the same stuff over and over again. So that was the process piece that MNS tried to offer to all the movements that we were involved with. It’s really quite fundamentally anarchist in its approach.
TFSR: So y’all are to blame for all those really long consensus meetings that I have to sit through?
B: Alas! We tried to do better than that, you should have seen our own gatherings.
TFSR: No, that’s interesting. Since I came up in the anti– or alter-globalization movement, that’s when I came into anarchist politics, the people in Northern California who were teaching about nonviolent direct action, doing trainings, who were talking about consensus, about the spokes council model, which that isn’t something I had seen put in place until the anti-war protests in 2003 in San Francisco. It’s interesting to pinpoint how these processes got tied in with not just protest politics but were the radical influences that were integrated with it came in.
So, another aspect of the work that the Movement for New Society participated in was alternative economic models within capitalism. The idea of building an alternative inside of capitalism and using that as a base of struggle is an idea that has replanted itself its own roots in the last 10 years in the US with conversations about infrastructure and autonomy. It goes further back you can point to the Zapatistas who are a clear example of the same thing, which for my generation was a huge influence and how we tried to do politics. Can you talk about what was the model, the role, and the application that you were aware of in pushes for cooperative business models, collective projects, and land trusts?
B: Yeah, that is another place that Movement for New Society made a big dent because the cooperative movement based on a critique of capitalism was pretty strong in the 1970’s. I wish it were that strong now, personally, the way I made a living was working for about 11 years altogether at a food coop, and I was part of the collective management of a food coop in Minneapolis. I know a lot about alternative economic institutions that we could talk about for an hour on that alone. Again, I’m talking from the Midwest, Minnesota, where there was a long tradition, actually going back to the 1920’s, of economic cooperation came with the Finnish immigrants to Michigan and Minnesota, Wisconsin. Also, the Swedes brought up a model of economic cooperation. So there already were coops. We called it the third wave of food coops in the 1970’s that came out of a countercultural youth movement, primarily white. My short answer is that the cooperative movement I was a part of was good for practicing and developing ideas. It made me feel quite skeptical about the possibility of really reforming capitalism that way.
We existed as a food coop. There was a very great network of food coops at that point, and a network of other kinds of coops – housing cooperatives, and land trusts that you mentioned. A bunch of experiments with how to use cooperation as a basis for economic life rather than competition. But we existed within the structure of capitalism, and we, unfortunately, succumbed to the structure of capitalism. The problem is the word “capital”. In order to do much of anything, we needed capital, that’s the whole basis of the capitalist system. So we got lucky in that we could start a bunch of small businesses, low-skilled – running a food coop does not require a whole lot of skill. A lot of people can put cans on shelves and can drag around boxes of produce and stuff like that. But so at low-skilled, we came in on the end of the mom-and-pop grocery stores, and supermarkets were actually developing and putting those grocery stores out of business. We moved into the actual literal buildings and the coolers and the equipment, the cash registers left behind by these mom-and-pop operations that had to fold up shop, and couldn’t compete with the supermarkets. We filled in a very specialized niche of natural foods. Very few people really cared about natural foods in the early 1970’s. So we had a market niche of natural foods, and we had the infrastructure, and it was a low-skilled operation. So we could capitalize on it with our labor, which is what we did. At the coop where I worked, a share of stock was $2. You became a member and earned a discount by volunteering your time. You got to vote in the running of the cooperative because you had that $2 share of stock. But you also had to put some time in, a certain number of hours in order to be a voting member. People were not really interested or thinking about the possibility of redistributing wealth through the cooperative structure – I was. Even though coops have changed dramatically since that time and gotten very quite glitzy and upscale, I still shop at coops because it basically tries to keep the wealth in as many hands as possible. The cooperative structure gives any profit back to the people who’ve invested in it and who’s created that work.
TFSR: Whether it be the worker-owned or the consumer cooperative, right?
B: Right. In my area of the country anyway, we started out with worker coops. So that the working made your membership and made your profit. You got rewarded for the number of hours you’d put in. Most coops in the late 1970’s throughout the mid-1980’s converted to the consumer coop model because of the capital problem. They needed more capital and they needed to raise actual money, not just labor, but money to buy new coolers, expand the stores, to remake the stores. As I said at the beginning, capitalism is premised on growth, the ability to grow. That affected us as cops as well, we wanted to sell more stuff, there was more food available that we could sell, the organic farming really took off in a big way. We could sell more stuff, people demanded more stuff, people’s expectations of what a coop or a grocery store would look like, everything around us was being more bourgeois and more upscale. That pressure was on the coops to do the same thing. I can talk about this because my coop was one of the last holdouts of a worker-owned coop in the Twin Cities. We consciously talked about how do we not grow, and how do we be successful without growing. We’d never come up with an answer to that. We had to say that the pressure in a capitalist society means that we really can’t do what we would like to do. We are going to have to grow, we are going to have to have a bit of new building, we’re going to have to move to a place where we have more room, we can carry more stuff, the coolers are not breaking down all the time, we have to buy more stuff. All of that requires more capital.
We managed to get away because we’ve been successful early on, we had some reserves. So we managed to get away without turning into a consumer coop. But we also fold it. But it was a good 30-year run. It was 30 years by the time that coop folded and I wasn’t involved till the bitter end. But to me, it really pointed out the difficulty with trying to form an alternative economic system from within the shell of the old one. Capitalism is so difficult, it doesn’t give us a lot of room to do something different. So I hate to be discouraging in saying this. But I think it’s really important to go into this with eyes open, otherwise, we spend a fair amount of time pursuing, essentially a utopian strategy that we can somehow create our own little island over here that is separate from the capitalist system. I have a great big critique of utopianism to the extent that an alternative economic system participates in a utopian idea that just by doing the right thing over here, we’ll just get bigger and bigger. Our little coop movement will get bigger and bigger and bigger and will just take over the capitalist system. Everybody will see the logic of cooperation rather than competition. They’ll enjoy cooperation more than the competition. It’ll be more of a satisfying way of life. I still believe all that’s true, but it didn’t work. The capitalist system is far more insidious and far more difficult than I wish it were. The utopian way of going about social changes is just not very realistic.
TFSR: A bit naive, maybe.
B: Oh, yeah, just not very realistic. So that said, I also want to say that within anarchism, of course, there’s always been and there remains a real wish to create the new society that we want to live in right here right now. I must admit that as an activist of maybe 45 years within activism, has been sustained a lot by little groups of people, like-minded people who I can take my problems to, and they all understand the kinds of issues that I’m trying to deal with and give me pats on the back when I need them and that little huddling thing. Also, it’s very sustaining. But I think we’re making a mistake if we think that by doing an ideal little society, a little ideal community, anarchist or otherwise, that that’s going to make the revolution happen. It really does help and sustain us in trying to make the revolution happen. But it’s not the same thing as– That’s not the strategy. That’s not the strategy that’s going to work. It is really helpful and sustaining for organizing.
TFSR: Flash forward a bit. It was the Republican National Convention…
B: Oh, yes.
TFSR: You said that the Movement for New Society was laid down, which is a very peaceful way of saying it in 1988. In the meantime, before we get to the RNC, were there other activities that you were engaged with that you wanted to talk about, and between there and 2008?
B: One of the things that are true for me as an activist is that I’ve never quit. I did sustain my own activism. It was a big disappointment to me when Movement for New Society folded up. It was a really a very peaceful ending. We love each other still, I’m still in touch with people that I was friends with in the MNS. We had a series of reunions. So it wasn’t a bitter end at all. But we recognize that a revolution of the sort that we were talking about really could not be carried out only by white people. We were pretty much all white people, and we really weren’t able to get beyond our own cultural boundaries in order to become a more diverse organization. So we decided we were going to end it, rather than peter out in a really sad way. And we’ll see what comes next. So that was why we laid it down in 1988, with a real intentional process.
I continued to be involved in peacework, I founded and was part of a training collective doing the same training for social change and social change skills, and did that throughout the 1990s. Another organization that came out of the Movement of New Society in some ways is called Training for Change. I’m still involved in it. It’s really expanded far beyond anything MNS did, and much better. In the Training, we’re much better now than we were. So Training became a piece of what I continued to do. Then in 1999, I got a message from another old MNS person who lived in Seattle saying, “You know what, there’s this great big thing that’s going to be happening out here, called the WTO. Has anybody heard of this thing? This protest is gonna be a lot bigger than we’re gonna be able to do the training for. Could you all come?” I said, “Sure, I’ll come.” Without having really any idea what I was walking into, I walked into the WTO protests in 1999. From that time on till 2007, I was quite involved in the resistance to globalization. I did a lot of non-violence training around the country, then I even got to Germany to do some work with the groups that were opposing the G8 meeting in 2007. So the Global Justice Movement was a big part of what I did in the early 2000’s. There I found anarchists all of a sudden, oh my gosh, there are lots and lots of anarchists. That’s great! That was real excitement in getting involved in the Global Justice Movement.
Then “look at what’s coming to my town, the Republican National Convention, oh sweet hallelujah!” I became involved in the RNC Welcoming Committee. I participated in the Welcoming Committee pretty much throughout from when it was founded through to the convention. Then I participated in the committee to defend the RNC8. I nearly avoided being charged myself, I think, in large part, they didn’t want me in the case, because it would have made it harder to make a case against the RNC8. If I was the ninth, it would have been harder to make the case against us. So they left me out. But I would have been a major witness for the RNC8 had it gone to trial. Then I put two and a half years into the defense work afterward. So altogether, that was like about four years of very intense work, planning for the convention and then mopping up afterward. That was my story about the RNC8.
TFSR: The point of the Welcoming Committee was to help to sustain a protest against the Republican Party and the potential election and protest against the 2008 elections, basically. The RNC8 was a conspiracy trial that the state created against some of the people that were involved in the Welcoming Committee and coordinating groups to do protests during the convention. It seems like a product of surviving that was also learning a bunch of skills towards resisting state efforts at repression. And I know that, having been around Anarchist Black Cross groups and repression groups, and having friends that have either been on conspiracy trials or doing support work, it seems like this is a pretty fundamental learning point for movement. Basically, that repression is going to come when you try to resist. Can you talk about a few lessons that you can take away from doing support for the RNC8?
B: Yeah, I can’t say that I was super surprised that we experienced the repression that we did. I wish I had been more alert about exactly who their informants in our group were. I was not. Some of the things that I learned were ways to identify where we might be infiltrated. What I learned about how to identify infiltration. Partly it was a real lack of clarity about politics. Truth to tell, there was a lot of lack of clarity about politics in the Welcoming Committee. But four people turned out to be informants. It was always a little puzzling why they kept coming to our meetings. That is something that I will carry away as an indicator – if I’m puzzled about what is the motivation of this person for being here? Well, the motivation might be that they’re paid to be here. Ah, now the pieces fall into place. So that was a really good lesson.
I’ll say it even though it’s a little bit controversial, I was troubled with the security culture of the Welcoming Committee. Not that it wasn’t good enough, but it lent itself to real suspiciousness and a certain self-deception about how one could keep oneself entirely safe. I say that even though some of the people did excellent jobs at keeping themselves out of trouble, so I guess I’m still puzzling over that. I’m still asking myself… On the one hand, I was feeling a little bit like the way that we’re approaching the security culture seems to me not very realistic, and maybe a little self-delusional. But then it turns out, we were infiltrated. So wasn’t it really all that self-delusional? Well, no, I guess not. But it surely didn’t keep us safe either. Security culture might have made it a little more tough for the law enforcement, but they managed quite nicely to completely infiltrate us. So I don’t know, I’m still mulling over the lessons there. Of course, those were lessons that the Occupy Movement had to deal with also just a few years later. They were also quite thoroughly infiltrated. The Occupy movement was far more porous. There was so much coming and going, it wasn’t an intentionally small group of people working on a particular project like the Welcoming Committee was. I’m still chewing on those lessons. I think security culture is really necessary and also it can be outright detrimental to organizing, if you’re changing the location of your meeting because you’re afraid that somebody is going to infiltrate it, then the people that you want to come might not even know where to go. There’s some self-defeating stuff about security culture. Obviously, it’s so necessary, too. I’m still mulling this one and I don’t have a conclusion.
TFSR: That’s okay. I think that some of the more applicable approaches towards security culture that I’ve heard have been akin to what you mentioned, if I can’t figure out your motivation, maybe there’s something outside of the realm of possibilities that I’m thinking of what might be motivating you to do that. I think likewise, there are certain social patterns that people engage with sometimes when they’re operating with poor security culture, that may be conscious or unconscious, that relate to bragging about things, talking about things that aren’t their business to talk about other people’s experiences or histories, attempting to pressure people into things or create divisions or splits as opposed to addressing things, like if they have an issue addressing that clearly between people and attempting to de-escalate or find a solution to a problem. But then there’s “we need to like shift around, we need to change names every meeting,” at a certain point, it does become self-defeating and Kafkaesque. One of the other really important things that I can think of that came out of the resistance to the Republican National Convention in 2008, was the Minneapolis Principles… Just kidding.
B: Dah!
TFSR: Got ya, the St. Paul Principles. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about that? What conversation led to that being adopted? What do you think the implications of that are?
B: The organizing to oppose the RNC was not just a Welcoming Committee, there was also a large march announced almost as soon as the RNC was announced. The Peace Movement announced a large march to be during the RNC. In the Twin Cities, we have a very active chapter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). That was really the group that was working to a large mobilization, that was hoping to get several many thousands of people to come to the Twin Cities and protest. They were planning on a permitted legal march, and there was a great deal of concern and discussion between them and the Welcoming Committee about how an anarchist non-hierarchical spontaneous space could be created, where people could do their thing and not be marshaled into a prescribed behavior and also have this big march that grandparents and grandchildren and strollers and people in wheelchairs could participate in. So that was the origin of the St. Paul Principles. We had the luxury of 18 months in which to organize. The relations between the anti-authoritarian and anarchist Welcoming Committee and the socialist-informed Peace March were not really easy during the whole of these 18 months of organizing. As we grew closer, we started to say, “Okay, we got to figure this out.” There were four days of the convention and the Welcoming Committee had really aimed at the first day of the convention to do our actions. Of course, the Peace March wanted to be on the first day too. Then there were some other groups that some other actions that we’re hoping to get their time during the four days of the convention, one of them being the Welfare Rights Organization that was going to be doing a march on the second day, which didn’t have a real organizing presence locally until fairly close to the convention.
So, the Freedom Road Socialist Peace Movement, and the anti-authoritarian anarchist movement came together, and for about a month, we worked out the principles. I remember I wrote an early draft, which was way wordy. Other people wrote big, wordy drafts, too. Then we had just some sit down and talk about it at meetings, to come up with a very streamlined four principles. Two of those came from the Welcoming Committee, and two of those came from the Peace Movement. The principle of not criticizing each other in public was one of the things that we felt very strongly about. To divide the protesters into good protesters and bad protesters and have the Peace Movement critiquing the anarchists, people felt very strongly that this was not acceptable. We insisted on that. The Peace Movement really insisted that we separate the actions in space or time and we had to work out that conjunction, whether it was “or” or “and”. That little conjunction took a lot of work. We agreed that we could separate our actions in space or time. I am blanking on the other two because they weren’t quite as difficult to get an agreement on.
I have seen the St. Paul Principles recently, where somebody just declared that we were going to use the St. Paul Principles. I thought, no, wait for a second, you can’t just declare that we’re going to use the St. Paul Principles here. You have to get the agreement to use the principles here. That’s why they worked because we had the luxury of pre-planning and doing the hard discussion and building up some modicum of trust. It really was still not a very trusting relationship, even after we got the principles down. There was still a good deal of mutual distrust. Anarchists feeling like “Don’t you dare bring your marshals over and tell us what to do. We’re not going to promise not to use the march as a launching point for an anarchist action, or a more spontaneous action. We’re not going to be policed that way.” And the Peace Movement feeling like “Don’t you use us as protection, if you’re gonna do something that’s gonna bring the police down, don’t come running to us.” It was tense right through the action. In the event, of course, the police became the enemy of both of our groups.
TFSR: As it should be.
B: Yeah. The policing really took center stage. We had a whole lot more solidarity afterward because of the way that the police came down on us. I was really pleased to see the principles basically holding all through the follow-up actions, too, because we had all these arrests and trials. We had 400 people arrested just in one day, and they were charged largely with misdemeanors, we had 18 felonies besides the RNC8, and a whole bunch of misdemeanors, most of which never went to trial. Some of the felonies did. So we had a whole question of solidarity afterward, as well as solidarity in the event. And St. Paul Principles held, there was not a lot of recrimination of “If those nasty anarchists just hadn’t done this, then the whole thing would have gone over off so much better.” Or “If those spineless peace people hadn’t done that, we would have had a much stronger presence or a much stronger demonstration.” There was not that public recrimination. I felt really, really happy with the process that resulted in the St. Paul Principles and the way that they held up afterward.
They are a good basis for further action, as long as there’s a real discussion about “what do you mean by separated in space or time? What do you mean by public criticism? Does that include Facebook? Does that include Twitter?” There are ways that you really have to know what you’re agreeing to? I feel like the St. Paul Principles do strengthen our movement. Probably some of my MNS colleagues, if they heard me saying that would be disagreeing with me. But I think they do strengthen our movement. And the strength, though, lies in working out the details, and what do they really mean? Are we truly agreeing to these things?
TFSR: Yeah, especially the holding to the principles. You can make any statement, but until all parties are on board with what it means and honestly engaging with them, it’s just a piece of paper.
B: Right. Especially as the whole thing gets changed and lost. As people lose memory of what they really meant and why they worked.
TFSR: Are there any projects that you’re excited to see blossoming in your scene? Have you seen St. Paul change over the years, while you’ve been organizing and agitating there?
B: I had been agitated.
I think that some of the things that I feel most hopeful about, there is a real willingness to engage in public action that just wasn’t there. If I go back to the 1980’s, even the 1990’s, I would tend to see the same faces at every single demonstration I went to. For instance, under President Clinton, we bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and a training camp in Afghanistan. This incident has been all glossed over in all the bombings we’ve done since. But I remember that the group of people organized with Afghani-Americans in the Twin Cities, and we did protests and demonstrations around the bombing in Afghanistan in the mid-1990’s. Then there was also Sarajevo and the bombings and the US involvement in the war in Bosnia. There’s actually a fairly large Serbian population in the Twin Cities. The Serbian-Americans came out against those bombing actions. Then there were the bombings in Vieques and the US naval practice carried out in Vieques. So Puerto Ricans came out in opposition to that, and yet there was a strain of people like myself and some of my other friends who came up to all of them. I began to think actually, it’s not bad that there is a certain core of us who care about bombs, whether they’re in Afghanistan, Sudan, or in Serbia, or Albania, or the Vieques. We care about bombs, and that it’s not entirely rooted in our self-interest. So I came to honor the fact that some people just will simply care about these issues, regardless of where they happen, or to whom they happen. At the same time, you get tired of seeing the same old people at every single one of these demonstrations. That’s not been my experience, since– Occupy was the first time that I noticed that I thought, “Hey, these are brand new faces, I haven’t seen these people before.” Since that time, I have seen more and more brand new faces, more and more people I haven’t ever seen before. I really love that, I love that there is an increasing sense of “I can’t just sit on the sidelines anymore, I have to do something.”
Because again, I feel like that’s a piece of anarchism. If we’re going to see an anarchist future, it really requires people to not sit on the sidelines. It requires a willingness to participate in public life. Sometimes I think that anarchism really demands a lot of that, and may be a little unrealistic in some ways about just how much participation in public life we can have. Nonetheless, I think that, for where we are today, or wherever we have come from, it’s really good to see so many people who are willing to say, “I want to participate in the formation of this society, I want to have a say in what’s going on, I want to try to think about how we can do things better, I’m willing to put some elbow grease and some time and some foot power into it.” It’s promising for an anarchist future that we have so many people who are feeling willing to speak up and to take part, I think that’s what an anarchist future is going to depend on. So that’s one of the things that I feel really excited about.
Currently, the project that I’m working with is Showing Up for Facial Justice (SURJ), it’s a national organization, but we have a very active chapter here in the Twin Cities. I’m working particularly on policing and on the possibility of spreading the ideas of the abolition of the police department, not just the prison system, but the police department itself, particularly to people of European descent, who may not have even considered the idea before and saying, “Well maybe it’s time for us to think about that, maybe it’s time to think about abolishing it completely, abolishing the police department?” And then having conversations about what then? And be willing to throw the ideas around, because we have to start someplace. Certainly, I’ve heard a lot of People Of Color saying “We have to abolish the police department.” They won’t be able to do that if white people get in the way. So to try to at least somewhat normalize the idea of abolishing the police among people of European descent, who have, unfortunately, the white privilege… At least introduce the idea, develop hopefully some sympathy for the idea of the project of abolition, and at least neutralize the opposition. So that’s the thing that I’m working on right now. With the background, the fundamental commitment to an anarchist future informing my politics and my actions, finding ways to develop both the culture of taking self-responsibility, self-management, of self-discipline, the culture that will be necessary to create an anarchist future and also the politics of not relying on authority and not declaring ourselves free of the need for military authority running our lives, or status to authority running our lives. This is what I can see to do at the moment.
TFSR: That’s lovely. Thank you, Betsy, so much. If only you could see if there was a video option on this side, I’m just nodding my head and with the microphone being down saying “Yes, yes.” Preach it.
Thank you so much for having this conversation. I’m happy to link to your organization trainingforchange.org in the show notes. Thanks so much for sharing all this info and these experiences and hope to get to meet you sometime.
B: Yeah, I hope so too. Thanks for reaching out and taking the time.
This episodes features two portions: an interview with Noelle about Black revolutionary, Janye Waller, incarcerated in Oakland; then, an interview with Noah about anarchist tactics in the NoDAPL struggle at Standing Rock.
Janye Waller
In the first segment we talk to Noelle about the case of Janye Waller. Janye is a young Black revolutionary from Oakland, California, who was the only person convicted of property destruction after the 2014 demonstrations in the Bay following the non-acquittal of pigs the murders of Michael Brown & Freddie Gray. Noelle is a supporter of Janye Waller and believes that Janye’s conviction was a clear case of railroading and racial profiling against a community activist. Janye is now finishing up a 2 year sentence with one year off for good behavior. The interview was held in February of 2017, and Janye is set to be released in coming months, then he’s out on parole. You can find out more about his case and donate to his post-release fund at https://rally.org/supportjanye and updates can be found on his support fedbook page and to find out more about some projects Janye was involved with in Oakland, check out the site for El Qilombo
You can write to Janye in the near future by addressing letters to:
Janye Waller #ba2719
A Facility,
P.O. Box 2500,
Susanville, CA 96127-2500
Anarchist Observations of the Struggle at Standing Rock
In the second segment William speaks with Noah, who is a well established movement medic, anarchist, and participant in #NoDAPL at Standing Rock, about his experiences there and analyses of how this resistance was organized and how it developed. This interview was recorded days before media saw the images of the Sacred Stone Camp burning and having been disbanded, so many of the modes and tenses that we employ are not what we might given the current position of the camps. We talk about a wide ranging set of topics, from what worked in the camps to what the failings were, and how resistance to extraction industries could look moving forward.
For links on how to support the efforts at Standing Rock – which are ongoing and support is needed both for folk’s legal and medical expenses – check out:
Shortly there’ll be a posted end to a call for submissions for presenters, workshops and bands at the first annual Asheville Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfaire up on the website, but we announce it here. Submission deadline is April 1st, 2017. Spots are filling up fast. Check out the website for updates and we hope to see you there!
TROUBLE showing at Firestorm, March 24th @ 7pm
That about says it. First episode of TROUBLE, which was chatted about in our last episode as the new video series by subMedia will be showing at Firestorm Books & Coffee at 7pm on Friday the 24th of March!
TFSR: So we’re here to talk about Standing Rock and I’m sure that folks have heard about it if they have been keeping at least half an eye on the news, but for those who haven’t, would you mind giving a brief overview of what the struggle is and what has been happening there?
NOAH: So the Dakota Access Pipeline is a large pipeline that would carry heavy crude oil to refineries in Illinois before getting sent out of the country for foreign consumption. The pipeline is routed to pass just upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation’s water intake, which is part of their concern, as well as the pipeline route
as gone through a number of sacred sites causing the desecration of burial sites and other old religious sites. Back in August (2016) when construction got close to the Missouri River crossing by the Standing Rock reservation, the Sacred Stone Camp, which had been in existence since April, had made a bigger call for support in which many folks responded and that’s when the first arrests took place, lead largely by women and youth from Standing Rock and other Indigenous women and youth. Here you saw some very strong images of women running out onto the Cannon Ball Ranch to block construction equipment which was some of the first real civil disobedience, as well as the Horse Nations coming to just be presented to the law enforcement that was there, but the law enforcement ended up being scared by the presentation of the Horse Nations and so they kinda backed off and fled. That was some very strong imaging right off the bat there.
I arrived not long after that and helped provide medical support for some of the non-violent civil disobedience and just in camp at large, based out of the Red Warrior Camp. Red Warrior Camp was one of the few organizations that really took a strong lead in actual civil disobedience that stopped pipeline construction and were it not for the Red Warrior Camp, Indigenous People’s Power Project, some of the crews, some of the other bands of the Lakota Nations
really stepping up and taking that direct action to the pipeline construction, that pipeline would be said and done by now. And we certainly wouldn’t have cost Dakota Access the millions upon 2millions of dollars we’ve cost them in lost time, delayed contracts and stock price as well as the divestments from the banks which with Seattle and some Native reservations have totaled well over $3 billion worth of money withdrawn from Wells Fargo and punitive response from people. So the divestment is going to leave a lasting mark on these banks’ psyches and their shareholders’ psyches when they think about funding more of these projects.
TFSR: Absolutely, and it seems like along with the actions that have been taken at the various camps, the relationships between the various camps has been also very important to have outreach via social media and awareness being spread in a grassroots way, because mainstream media was very slow seemingly to pick up on
struggles going on at Standing Rock. Do you have anything to say about media blackouts there or anything like that? What has the process been for getting word out?
N: Well certainly it’s been led by some grassroots media projects that have been around since the start of the Sacred Stone Camp. Folks with Unicorn Riot have been there throughout the course of much of this which certainly is where I first started getting my media from
as they did intermittent updates on the Sacred Stone Camp from it’s start and through several stages of it well before Standing Rock or NoDAPL became a more common phrase. I think it was also very important for the largest camp at the Oceti Sakowin camp, the Seven Fire Council Camp, which was kind of just an overflow camp.
TFSR: Was that the youth camp?
N: The International Youth Council had a tipi in that camp for a while, but they were also holding space at Sacred Stone Camp and the Rose Bud Camp. The camps can be confusing when you’re there, and have been confusing. I’m sure it’s particularly hard to keep track of when you’re watching from afar. Sacred Stone Camp is Ladonna Bravebull Allard and her family’s land, which was started
by Ladonna and some other matriarchs from the area and the youth runners back in the start of April. And it was the Dakota Youth Runners who started getting a lot of attention from the long-distance runs they did.
It also needs to be pressed that there have been folks in that region who have been organizing in anticipation of the Keystone XL pipeline coming through Lakota territory that allowed for some of the groups within this larger mass to come together quickly and in an organized manner and show greater levels of discipline and training because we had been training together. We were under the leadership
of Lakota matriarchs and other Lakota elders who understood from the get-go that as these pipelines were coming through, we needed to be able to have a common language around how we fight and how we resist with non-violent civil disobedience. And so folks are familiar, folks understand that there are different roles. If your role is
media for the day, or medic, or police liason, that’s your role for that day and you need to stick to it and if that’s not your role, then you need to not try and make that your role.
So that’s why when the camp was significantly smaller than when it was 12,000 people between the camps, when there were only a few hundred folks in camp there was more effective direct action to stop the pipeline than when there were all these folks who came to stand with Standing Rock but there were no plans to use that mass of people effectively or an unwillingness to utilize any of those plans on the parts of some.
TFSR: Is that just because the camp got so unruly with the size, or do you feel that people were kind of not respecting any directives that were being told to them?
N: No, as I’ve seen it put on the internet, that there was a problem with “peace-chiefs” trying to lead during a war situation. And so there were folks who, in the language I would use, didn’t respect others’ diversity of tactics. And so there were folks who would interfere with Warriors and Water Protectors on the frontline and cause division and even go so far as to utilize spiritual abuse and manipulation to interrupt actions that were happening, or not allow actions to happen or prevent them from happening in very vague ways, like getting outside folks to try and scream at people that “Elders said no!” And what they meant was Dave Archambault and the tribal council might not be happy with what’s going on. But there are a number of different elders in the camp because there
are many different tribes and nations in the camp, but not everyone listens to the same elders. Folks are taught to listen to their elders. The Lakota are not a monolithic group, they disagree with each other. Sometimes the grandmas and aunties would be there telling folks to hold the line while others would be telling them to go back to
camp and pray. To some extent because the camp grew so fast and there wasn’t space made for an all-nations council of any sort, these rifts and problems became rather challenging at times because there was so much to do just in camp life and preparing for the change of the seasons and to try and train and utilize huge numbers of people who were rolling over every few days as well as deal with mountains of supplies coming in.
It all became very challenging, and then you have a real separation of leadership of folks who are contracted by the tribe to help, or were from larger non-profits who largely operated out of the casino rather than the camp. So you have that disconnect of folks who weren’t involved in the camps but were considered leadership for one reason or another, which made things very challenging all in all. When the information about what’s happening in camp gets through games of telephone, you end up with a lot of rumor and heresy added in, or misinformation, and that can be seen by how often facebook says the camp is being raided when we’re not.
TFSR: As an anarchist, I feel almost single-mindedly fixated on this idea of what you were talking about in regards to a non-respect of a diversity of tactics and trying to parse out where a rhetoric of non- violence is coming from. We talk a lot about how liberals have sort of co-opted the idea of non-violence to weaponize it against radical struggle basically, or to weaponize it as a way to take the wind out of sails of radical struggle. I would imagine that this rhetoric of non-violence is a bit different given the layers of colonization and disenfranchisement that people are experiencing. Do you have any words about that?
N: There’s certainly a real challenge for anyone who’s not Lakota or Native to understand the nuance and the history between the Indian Re-Organization Act, Tribal Councils versus the Traditional Treaty Councils. It’s important especially for outsiders to err on the side of listening to the folks who are directly hosting them in these situations and not be overtly disrespectful to local communities. Now that doesn’t mean that local communities are unified in their response, and that’s not really our place as outsiders to really dive right into the middle of it and stir it up. I have been working with some folks who were out there for several years so those were the folks I took my lead from because they are traditional Lakota and Dakota Matriarchs. So with that, there was a division of folks who believed in the courts and believed in that being the primary route and would at times spread disinformation about how the action of folks locking down to equipment or shutting down work sites was going to negatively impact these civil court proceedings. If anything they gave these civil court proceedings the time they needed to get denied, but there hasn’t been a win from the courts in this battle that I’m aware of. So if we were relying solely on those means, the pipeline would have been built by now.
The spark of inspiration that that has come out of Standing Rock would not have been if it weren’t for folks who understand that prayers have to be met half-way. We can’t just pray and expect things to stop, and similarly we have to understand robust histories. You hear this ongoing colonized myth that First Nations Peoples were completely passive or pacifistic when that’s simply not true. It’s well known that many Nations and many people were almost
always armed and prepared to defend their homelands and their territory and their way of life from settler-colonial populations. Part of this myth comes from those boarding schools; it comes from this western narrative that says “It was the white folks that freed the slaves!” and “It was the white folks who were benevolent enough to give these Natives the reservations!” rather than things like, the
6Lakota slaughtered a whole division of the cavalry at the battle of Greasy Grass and killed Custer and took that flag, and that was part of writing the treaty. Red Cloud’s wars and the Big Powder Bluff were the reasons for those treaties, the Northern Cheyenne; the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota’s fierce resistance to the U.S. incursions
and these settler/colonial incursions are what created these treaties. It’s also what provoked the U.S. into using genocidal tactics such as slaughtering all the buffalo and stripping Natives from their culture to send them to boarding school, so they could re-write those narratives
and send those kids back to those cultures with this wrong narrative.
And so with that you have this Christian idea of forgiveness that is pressed, or of understanding, and I personally hope that those cops and law enforcement come to some dawning of understanding that their ways are bad. But until that happens I have no sympathy for them or no forgiveness for their behaviors until they seek it. And so it’s something that personally baffles me, especially coming from a medic’s perspective and seeing the grievous injuries that we’ve seen out there. That folks want to negotiate with these people or work with them to get into that system. It’s one of those things, some folks who don’t want the (Water) Protectors to continue resisting are legitimately scared that those cops are going to kill one of us. And that’s a very real possibility but it also disrespects a lot of those folks’ agency, who understand that they may die in this struggle. And that if the state is going to go through such measures and allow their law enforcement to utilize these munitions, these so-called less-than-lethal munitions in reckless ways, then yeah they may end up killing someone but you know if they kill a Water Protector whose got their hands up and are in prayer, isn’t that that non-violent Ghandian King-esque nonviolence that they’re talking about? Let them harm us to the point that the moral imperative becomes so overwhelmingly against them that they have to give up? That they don’t have the will to beat you any longer?
TFSR: Also in a time when we have this new president now who is actively seeking to criminalize so-called peaceful protesters? Seeking any kind of legitimacy from the state doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but what also makes a lot of sense is taking leadership from people who are most effected and also keeping in mind that that’s a non-homogenous group of people. It’s a very complicated situation, it seems like it’s very difficult to know where to draw the line while also maintaining your own political integrity in all of this as well, to be a whole human being. You mention that you are a movement medic, and you have spoken about your experiences at Standing Rock, but I was wondering if there was anything that you wanted to add about your involvement at the camp?
N: My involvement at the camp has largely been as a medic in support of the Water Protectors, so I’ve both worked to help increase the medic capacity and continue to work to try and help us stay coordinated and functioning in a way that allows us to provide the best level of care that we can. I have also gone out on a number of the direct actions to support Water Protectors and have dealt with some injuries and elements and the volumes, which were pretty staggering at times. November 20th when they just kept using water cannons on folks, both speaks to the heart and willingness of the water protectors but from the medic’s perspective we saw over 300 patients that night.
Several folks were severely injured; Sophia Wilansky nearly lost her arm that night, and other folks have lost permanent vision from that night, and the level of PTSD that has been inflicted on folks in these situations or the potential for it.
Similarly when the Sacred Ground Camp on the Easement was raided on October 27th, they literally just lined up and whooped on folks all day. We’re seeing the Miami Model play out in rural settings. Sheriff Laney from Cass County and Sheriff Meyer from Morton County I’m sure will retire real soon and go on the law enforcement and security speaking tour, to pop up at every pipeline and give advice
on how to deal with these “damn eco-terrorist protestor types.”
TFSR: And there has been a whole lot of law enforcement there from day one it seems, right?
N: Not from day one, I mean Morton County I think employs 33 or 39 sheriffs total. (*laughter*) And the North Dakota State Police and Highway Patrol could only muster so many folks, but now law enforcement from nine other states, federal agencies like the ATF and Border Patrol have been deployed out there. There is I believe just more than 500 North Dakota National Guardsmen who are activated presently. There is now quite the policing apparatus as was on display when the Last Child Camp was raided and shut down. They had over six armored vehicles out that day.
TFSR: It feels important to analyze police responses to struggles like this in order to get a psychological hold on to what the hell is going on, and we’ve been seeing a lot of media recently about the struggle, and many different approaches from total erasure to pretty heartfelt support. I’m wondering what your opinions are about how you see
this struggle informing future struggles and how you see this one particularly continuing, or if it’s too early to say?
N: I think at the very least what has happened out there in the treaty territories has brought a new level of what it looks like to be brave in the face of the state for folks. And it’s behaviors it can be pointed to as strong definitive attempts at non-violent action that we’ve already seen. At the Piñon Pipeline, there was one action out there and they cancelled it. At the Trans-Pecos Pipeline, there have been a couple of actions already and they’ve shut down work. Mississippi Stand went after other sections of the Dakota Access Pipeline down in Iowa, we’re seeing folks starting to really resist the Sabal Pipeline, Spectra Pipeline, Lancaster PA is starting to openly build camps and openly express how we aren’t paid outside agitators, here’s the local teacher. These are local folks who are stepping up and saying “Oh heck no, can we do this here?” I think it’s important as we do this that we need to understand that there is a space for specifically prayerful things, and there is a space specifically for the prayer war, and there is a space for the more confrontational direct action tactics, but these are not the same space.
And I think it needs to be stressed that the Water Protectors and Warriors never went back to the camp and were like “Ya’ll are praying wrong! Ya’ll need to go pray over there! Ya’ll need to pray like this!” That is what some of the folks who use spirituality like Christians do, they use it as a manipulation tactic. They use spirituality much like
Christians say “You have to pray like we pray here.” Even to otherLakota, who were taught differently. That caused some real tensions, and there’s some real beef that I can’t claim to fully understand that I know. There’s family members who don’t like each other over that stuff, because folks called and asked for Warriors to come and those same folks, when they saw what Warriors did and what Water Protectors do to actually stop pipelines, they got scared. Either pressure got put on them through back-channels, or they realized that they would not be able to
control the narrative. So they pass a number of rules or any number of authorities on folks to say “You can’t do that this way!” Which certainly rubbed a number of folks the wrong way, when no one could really say where these decisions were coming from.
TFSR: Before I ask the next question I want to be really explicit about what you mean by prayer. This is non-Christian explicitly?
N: Yeah, this is explicitly Lakota spirituality, whose homelands we were on, Lakota treaty territory, Lakota and Dakota lands, and there were some basic modicums that were asked of folks to respect, things like don’t take pictures of the sacred fires, or put stuff in the sacred fires unless you’ve gotten permission. If you have a uterus and you’re on your moon, then to stay away from ceremony, stay out of the kitchen, just some cultural norms there. Up at big camp, there were folks from many nations operating in many different ways. There was some kind of manipulation of that that happened that was used as a point of leverage to dishearten and disrupt some of the youth and some of the frontline folks. Part of that is intergenerational difference, part of that is that older folks were raised in a time when native youth were being snatched and taken to boarding camps. A certain amount of hiding was the safest way to do things, which some of the folks with the International Youth Council and some of the other youth that have been leading this understand. They love and respect their elders but they also recognize that it is a different day and that these adults who are coming in to leadership roles who have listened to their elders and gone and gotten those educations and have been getting told for years that they need to step up and lead. When this happened in camp, there were folks that came up and criticized them. There were other elders that wouldn’t chastise folks in public, would openly support folks for not trying to take a lead role but were there as an elder to both support and be a resource.
There was a lot of issues around white folks telling Lakotas to stay in a prayerful way. There are Warriors that I know who are Pipe-Carriers, they don’t carry their pipes to the frontline, they are very spiritual and prayerful people, and for people to accuse them of not being in a prayerful way while they’re going to risk their freedom and personal wellbeing for the future generations, for the water, for the air, for the commons like that, for all of us, to challenge those folks’ spiritual intentions and spiritual actions, especially if you don’t even understand their spiritual practice, is both disrespectful and the added attitude of an agent-moderator. That’s some stuff that could be portrayed by folks intentionally trying to upset affective action.
TFSR: Do you feel like this is an analysis that is spreading? I have seen a little bit of analysis of what you’re talking about right now being disseminated over news channels and social media and whatnot, but do you see this spread of, for the lack of a better word on my part, this discussion of a diversity of tactics being disseminated to other anti-extraction struggles?
N: You know it’s hard to say, I’ve largely stayed put in North Dakota for the past several months. But a lot of folks from different struggles came through and I can’t speak for them because they saw what they saw with their own eyes, depending on when and where they were in those camps they could have seen drastically different things and been told drastically different stories as to what was happening at that moment, what had happened up until that moment and where things were going to go. But I do think folks are waking up and I think the intersectionality of struggles that is becoming more present is what will allow this discussion of diversity of tactics to really come more to the forefront. I don’t think it needs to be a discussion, I think it just needs to be a respect that happens. And with different groups that aren’t in a position to lose privilege from where they’re at, have that freedom of nothing left to lose, whereas privileged folks, largely a lot of white folks, but settler-colonialist folks who have more access to stuff, pull their punches. They have a real tendency to pull their punches in these situations, or paid-organizers pull their punches because finishing off a campaign definitively leaves them without work or without the control of an organization that they had. Whereas, folks whose hearts are true, who really are committed to that land, that water and that future, and getting everyone free as soon as we can now, they’re gonna be more willing to not view a broken window or some damaged bulldozers as violence when they see people starving, people going hungry, people being incarcerated, unarmed protestors, etc. We have people who are facing decades (in prison time) for a lockdown. We have this aggressive set of policing tactics that are being deployed against us that, like it or not, folks
need to create that big crowd for some more direct action to happen out of so that it can be done safely and non-violently, or the options that will be left will be groups that don’t come out in public and only see violence as an option and not getting caught, if non-violently praying and getting arrested can get someone 10-20 years (in prison). It’s going to push folks in that hardcore direction, and it’s more a question of if we can do the outreach and the education that the bulk of the dissidents of society come with us, rather than cling to law and order as the main goal of society rather than evolution or something like that.
TFSR: You mentioned the intersectionality of struggle a little while ago, and one of the last questions that I have is that is struggle an inappropriate word? Just to go off script for a moment…
N: It definitely is a struggle. We’re all tired and hurt and sore. It’s a damn struggle, convincing folks to support, folks having to win that support through footage of them standing in prayer getting the crap beat out of them by multi-state law enforcement, that’s a struggle, that’s a fight.
TFSR: For real! Then this struggle has generated a lot of momentum it seems, at least within anarchism, around anti-extraction industries and there was a lot of momentum prior to this, but this feels somewhat different. Also one thing that I find really exciting is that it has generated a lot of discussion about meshing these two discussions of anti-extraction struggle with an explicit anti-colonialist discussion as well. Would you talk about whether you see this as being something new, and a bit about the importance of intertwining these two analyses?
N: I think the intersectionality starts becoming to be real obvious when you look at things like the current immigration raids versus the fact that Flint still isn’t a priority of our federal government, to get them clean drinking water. The fact that the state of North
Dakota has spent $23 million and counting on policing costs to get a pipeline put in that’s not going to create much revenue or jobs or anything for that state. There’s a need to kind of recognize the continual looting of this land by financial interests of various sorts, that is the base injustice. Folks who want to tweak or modify the system, I feel are failing to appreciate the toxicity of what this American system was built on, that it is built on stolen land, that it is built with stolen hands, and much of this profit. I’ve done a lot of work in labor and class stuff, and there’s a temptation to say “Oh this is a class thing” and “the value of our labor is being taken from us” but even the labor that we’re taking on is being stolen from the land
of folks who were the first inhabitants here. None of that is possible, a lot of the anarchist and revolutionaries will fight for everyone and forget the Native people, and so I think that it is crucial that how we start thinking about these struggles brings into the anti-colonial decolonizing mindset and the support and leadership of folks who are still strong in their indigeneity, to avoid tokenizing folks because “Hey you’re Native, we’re gonna put you in charge” even if someone was raised Christian and they don’t know much about where they come from. The importance of that indigeneity, those are the folks that have that understanding of living with the land and living as part of an eco-system, and they have that appreciation of the land and the creatures that all vie for us.
And so when we talk about the pollution and damage done by these extreme industries, we need to look at that damage done and that cultural genocide that’s been done against folks who just want, like many Indigenous cultures around the world who lived as part of the land they were on, and were thankful for that land, for providing for them, as opposed to the Christian concept of dominion over the
land, which is an interesting interpretation of being good stewards. I think that the need for those intersections, the need for Black Lives Matter and how powerful it was to have folks like Chairman Fred Hampton Jr come out with folks and all the 300+ Nations that came out and showed their solidarity and numerous white folks from different organizations that came and showed solidarity, saw in a lot of ways how that camp was operating in a good humble way, and there was no need for money for most things. If you’re doing work, there’s kitchens that will feed you, and a lot of folks took that shit like it was Burning Man and just came and took and were culture-vultures on the whole thing and were fetishizing Natives in resistance and were just working on their photo or art project or wanting to come up and tell the tale. Are you Native? You probably shouldn’t be telling that tale, you should help and empower these Native youth who are trying to tell their tales right now.
And I think that’s some of the importance of intersectionality is these recognitions that there are going to be folks who just know how to do it better because they were raised that way. It’s like the damn tipis that didn’t budge in the windstorms, and everyone’s tents that gotten flattened out. There’s some stuff that local folks will just know, and when we’re talking about these rural places and when we’re talking about taking Indigenous leadership or local leadership in place, is we have to recognize that just because you may be educated, or a permaculture demi-god to folks out there, that doesn’t actually translate to that bio-region, and if that doesn’t translate to pragmatic things that folks can do, if you’re just gonna come and say you should do it all in this way, it’s that same problem. It’s not looking at the intersections, it’s presenting “this is the way it should be done. This is the model we have, this is how we’ve been doing. We fail most of the time, but this is the model of how we do this.”
TFSR: That also calls into question really challenging people to actually fully examine why they’re doing something. Are you going to Standing Rock because you want to work on your photo project? Are you going to be updating your instagram about it? or are you going to actually have as real solidarity with people and struggle as
you can have?
N: And there’s the question there about a lot of conditional allies out there. I’ve seen their facebook comments about how getting beat up or saying mean things to law enforcement doesn’t keep with our message and loses support for us. And I challenge anyone that if your support is so easily lost, did you ever really give it in an earnest and heartfelt way? There are some grandmas out there who just about make me cry with the support they show their youth, and how proud they are of these young folks. I’ve seen these young folks get to the top of the hill, where there’s footage of folks getting brutalized at the bottom, they’ll touch a cop, not in a harmful way, just touch ‘em.
Showing their bravery, demystifying and showing that they could do more but not having to. Seeing these different ways of doing things, seeing these powerful moments of praise that folks get, knowing that these young folks are earning real prestige in their culture by doing these things while others are both trying to shame them while other grandmas are holding them up. It’s a lot.
TFSR: That’s incredible, and for me such an amazing concept and very inspiring thing to hear about. Those are all the questions that I had, do you have anything else that you wanna add?
N: Just that there isn’t a region in this country that’s free from pipeline expansions right now. Get trained, get rowdy, let’s kill this stuff. Let’s kill some black snakes.
This week we are airing two short interviews, the first is with an anarchist legal worker who has been participating in resistance at Standing Rock in so called North Dakota. This interview is specifically about the grand jury summons which was recently served to someone who was struggling at Standing Rock, we speak about what a grand jury is and how people might resist them, also a bit about what it means for this movement to have a grand jury subpoena occur at this moment.
Scott Campbell on upcoming tour of Mexico with It’s Going Down
The next interview we will present is a conversation with Scott Campbell who writes the Insumisión column for itsgoingdown.org. Insumisión is a semi regular publication which aims to highlight anarchistic and anarchist struggles and news all around Mexico. Scott and members of IGD are in the process of launching an information gathering and affinity building tour around Mexico in early next year. In this interview we talk about Insumisión and what inspired it, as well as some of the strategies and influences both North American and Mexican struggle can take from one another, among other topics. To read Insumisión and for a write up about the upcoming tour, you can visit https://itsgoingdown.org/insumision/. To donate to the tour and to see a write up about it, you can visit the rally dot org website https://rally.org/igd-mexico
“[This project] is an international watchdog against state sponsored repression. It is the project of a small collective of volunteers in the U.S. and Mexico. We publish and translate communiqués, articles, and other media by, about, and for social movements. Our primary focus is on indigenous peoples, women, and youth, in both urban and rural communities in Oaxaca, but we also publish about other struggles against neoliberalism throughout Mexico”.
Thanks!!
A quick shoutout of thanks to KFED for the lovely new image for the series podcast. Much appreciated!
Friday, March 1st is the first Friday of the month and therefore the Trouble Showing at Firestorm Books and Coffee in Asheville, NC. Episode 18, entitled ACAB (for All Cops Are Bastards) airs at 6:30pm and will be followed by a little over an hour of discussion.
of anti-fascist metal including Rat Broth, 
