Keep Reardon On The Run!

  • March 14, 2018 3:04 pm

from Philly Antifa

Oh gee the life of a neo-nazi sure is a rough one!
Ex-Philadelphian Mark Daniel Reardon can’t seem to catch a break. After we exposed him in 2017 for flyering Nazi propaganda on college campuses, immense community pressure and good works quickly evicted him from his apartment and he was fired from his job. Great work neighbors!
Typically stupid as Nazis are, Reardon did not learn the lesson that there are consequences for hate mongering. He continued his trashy Nazi path by travelling down to Charlottesville and taking part in Leif Erikson Day here in Philly. All the while spreading tons of racist, bigoted, sexist views from his badly done fringe cartoons he composed hidden in an even shittier apartment in Voorhees, NJ. After more good works by Antifascists of exposing his new address and his Nazi ideology being revealed so publicly, poor Mark felt the heat and has fled the country. YAY!
But, he STILL hasn’t learned.
He has set up a support account to fund his existence, which we think is rightfully bankrupt.
MakerSupport should be made aware that they are creating a safe space for Nazis, and that is an outrage and needs to stop!
And tell them to shut down:
CW if you click VERY offensive racist, anti-semetic, violently homophobic/transphobic/sexist content

Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Locals Take Over Pipeline Office, Then Occupy Drill Rig

  • March 14, 2018 3:00 pm

from Earth First Journal

from Lancaster Against Pipelines

A bus full of pipeline protesters. From Lancaster Against Pipelines facebook

Something extraordinary happened in Lancaster County yesterday.

A busload of fifty local residents took over the field offices of Williams/Transco at 805 Estelle Drive, Suite 101, in Lancaster. We dropped a 12 foot stretch of pipeline in Williams’s meeting room, sang songs through the hallways, and slapped a Condemnation Notice on the door before leaving. When a Williams employee complained about our visit, one of our residents deadpanned: “Sucks to be invaded, doesn’t it?”

Our message was simple and direct: we the people, whose lives and land are under assault by this toxic piepline, openly defy the “right” of dirty energy giants to profit at the expense of our health, safety, water, and land.

From there, the bus headed down to southern Lancaster County where Williams is drilling under the Conestoga River and desecrating federally recognized indigenous graves. The HDD process they’re using is the same one now contaminating drinking water along the Mariner East 2 pipeline.

We walked off the bus and sang our way straight onto the worksite, right past the workers, and up onto the drill rig itself. After police arrived, five bold residents locked arms and stood atop that monstrous machinery for another three hours, shutting down operations for the rest of the day.

By day’s end, the Drill Rig Five were arrested while defending our community. It’s a perversion of justice that law enforcement are sued to protect the financial interests of energy giants in Oklahoma over the health and safety of local residents. We look forward to the day when fossil fuel billionaires are stuffed into police cruisers for sabotaging our children’s future, rather than those of us peacefully working to protect that future.

Yesterday made one thing crystal clear: local communities are done waiting around for regulators, legislators, judges, and law enforcement to protect our most basic rights–pure water, healthy soil, clean air, and safe communities.

Until it’s illegal for dirty energy giants like Williams to seize farmland and force explosive pipelines next to our children’s schools, we’ll keep walking onto their destruction sites, dropping pipes into their corporate offices, and singing songs of defiance right onto their deathly drill rigs.

Momentum is shifting, and the industry knows it. That’s why they’re so desperate–and why we need to be more resolved than ever. And the march goes on!

Freight Train Traffic Disrupted by Anarchists

  • March 13, 2018 12:43 am

from Insurrection News

CHOOCHOO

Received on 12.03.18:

Taking inspiration from Olympia Stand, we disrupted freight train traffic using copper wire. We did this three times over the last 30 days. Since hearing of the blockade we felt the need to act in solidarity and we know it was a while ago but time is a scam!!!!!

Obviously we took this action because we hate the economy, money, and the things that keep capitalism moving! We want to fuck with its flow with whatever means we had.

This action is also meant to be an attack on the social peace. Hierarchy and domination are a problem, and we want to attack all its forms, but submission, apathy, conformity, resignation, and stagnation also prevent us from being free. We want to end everything that holds this misery together. Fuck comfort and safety—nothing is safe! This supposed “security” people strive for is just creating more policing over our lives. We need to let go of security! How can we expect to move toward freedom without letting go of comfort and taking real risks?

The crisis is always urgent!
Anarchy as a struggle lived in the present!

Solidarity with anarchists and anti-fascists facing repression and torture in Russia
Solidarity to the anarchists in Hamilton fighting the rich and those who defend their peace of mind and property
Solidarity to the remaining J20 defendants
Also shout out & solidarity to whoever smashed the cafe windows of some buildings in West Philly recently

Solidarity Not Borders: From Athens to Philadelphia

  • March 11, 2018 12:06 pm

from Facebook

Come to the Wooden Shoe to learn about non-state, non-NGO solidarity work with global migrants, with a focus on Greece. Collective member Sharon Jacobs will share experiences from months living and organizing with migrants in an Athens squat, and we will watch an episode of the subMedia show Trouble connecting the situation in Athens with migrant struggles around the world. We’ll discuss connections between Greece and other places where migrants face state repression and human rights violations, within a context of international conflict and imperialism.

This event is being held in solidarity with Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza (https://www.facebook.com/sol2refugeesen/) and the #17m18ActionDay against anti-migration policies between states.

[March 18 from 7PM to 9PMat Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Saint Paddy’s Day Antifascist Extravaganza

  • March 10, 2018 7:05 pm

from Facebook

Come out to enjoy an evening of films and food centered around antifascism. Two films will be shown:

The Limerick Brigadistas-The true story of volunteers from Ireland who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

and

Antifa, A Documentary-A new film that explores the history and origins of the modern antifascist movement.

This is a free event!

Vendors will be selling books and baked goods, with all proceeds going to the legal defense fund for antifascists arrested protesting the recent Richard Spencer speech at Michigan State University.

[March 17 from 5PM to 9PM at A-Space 4722 Baltimore Ave]

CORRECTION: Jack “Pale Horse” Corbin Previously Falsely ID’d – Is Actually Daniel W. McMahon of Brandon, FL!

  • March 10, 2018 12:30 am

from Philly Antifa

Daniel William McMahon, aka Jack “Pale Horse” Corbin, of Brandon FL
Jack “Pale Horse” Corbin posting the video above discussing his role as leader of Open Carry Florida. This is from the leaked discord chat logs courtesy of Unicorn Riot.

As many of our readers are probably aware, in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA in August, there was a huge push among Neo-Nazis, especially those associated with 8chan’s nazi-infested “Pol” board, to dox and harass Anti-Fascists who participated in protesting the rally.

One nazi in particular, going by the alias Jack “Pale Horse” Corbin, was especially prolific in doxxing Anti-Racists and Anti-Fascists. Eager to unmask Pale Horse, Anti-Fascists within the TORCH network, as well as independent Antifa, rushed their research and made a critical error by falsely identifying Corbin as Jake Loubriel of Dania Beach, FL.

To be fair, not only is Loubriel a far-right racist Trump supporter, he has participated in doxxing Antifa, just not under the alias Jack Corbin.  Corbin stole pictures of Loubriel from social media and intentionally used them as a red herring to throw off Antifa.  This was an deliberate deception by Corbin; not an oversight by Antifa. Loubriel and Corbin are both living in Florida and have intersected on open carry and 2nd amendment pages.

Loubriel also appears to support Corbin doxxing and threatening Anti-Racists and Antifa. So while we should always strive for 100% accuracy in our reporting, and those who rushed to identify Corbin as Loubriel should take a serious lesson from this, they can take solace in knowing that the person falsely accused of being Jack Corbin is still a piece of shit far-right racist who has participated in the doxxing of Antifa, just not this Corbin piece of shit in particular.

For our part, we would like to apologize to our readers for re-posting and blindly accepting the dox of Loubriel.  The information seemed legitimate and the source was trusted, but, obviously, we should have independently confirmed it as such.

After learning that Loubriel was not Corbin via an infiltrator, our intel department went to work trying to positively ID them once and for all. After much research, we are prepared to name Jack “Pale Horse” Corbin as Daniel William McMahon of Brandon, FL.

A Statement on International Women’s Day

  • March 8, 2018 7:48 pm

from Philly IWW

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.

The rising of the women means the rising of the (human) race.

No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,

But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

There is no major movement – social or political – that has not been touched indelibly by women. No movement more so, perhaps, than the International Labor Movement.

Where there have been principled, passionate, and strident gains for working people, women have been a crucial guiding force, though they have often gone unheralded. We recently saw that once more in West Virginia as their teachers, most of whom are women, defied the orders of their government and their union leaders by staging a wildcat strike.

That goes especially for our Union, The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It was a Union co-founded by women at a time when virtually all major, American labor organizations did not allow women; much less allow them leadership roles. Yet in its earliest years, its most visible and effective members were women – including Lucy Parsons, Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Dorothy Day, and Helen Keller. Among its greatest moments – including the 1912 Lawrence, MA Textile Workers Strike – depended on the mass mobilization and leadership of women, many of whom were immigrants.

Textile workers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey also marched under the banner of the “One Big Union” in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, whether by accident or on purpose, many of their words and deeds have been lost to history. They have largely gone unnoticed by the culture-at-large and are scarcely taught to children.

But the latest incarnation of the Philadelphia IWW – along with its contingency in the Harrisburg area – hasn’t forgotten their struggle. From them, we have acquired an ambitious, hard-earned legacy. That legacy is vision of a world beyond the exploitative wage system but what’s more, it is a vision in which all forms of bigotry and alienation – including sexism – are eradicated and the present, patriarchal orientation of our society is permanently recalibrated. Not only do we believe it to be the right thing to do but we believe our goals will be impossible to achieve one without the other.

On this International Women’s Day – March 8, 2018 – we recommit ourselves to the billions of working class people across the gender spectrum. We offer our support and our efforts, especially to those who find themselves on society’s margins due to their gender identity. We also strive to make our Union a more inclusive and affirming place for non-men; we will do our best to uproot any and all forms of toxic masculinity we find in our Union, our branch, and ourselves.

In our workplaces and in our communities, the Philadelphia  IWW will fight sexism by any means necessary.

Antifascist Education (a discussion)

  • March 8, 2018 12:02 pm

from Facebook

The Radical Education Department (RED) is hosting a discussion about anti-fascist education in both senses of this expression: i) educating ourselves about the deep and broad history of anti-fascism; and ii) mobilizing education as a weapon for anti-fascist struggles today.

The discussion will explore the connections between fascism, capitalism, the patriarchy, and racism, as well as the ways that liberal ideology abets fascist movements by misrepresenting issues such as violence and free speech. It will also point out the importance of linking the many sites of antifascist struggles at universities, prisons, public monuments, and beyond.

Ultimately, the discussion will map possibilities for countering a rising tide of fascism with a broad radical left politics that isn’t only on the defensive but goes on the offensive!

This event has been organized by John-Patrick Schultz and Gabriel Rockhill, who are founding members of RED, an autonomous collective dedicated to the construction of a radical internationalist Left through the training and federation of its cultural warriors. They will be joined in the conversation by two longstanding activists: Ania Loomba, who has recently been involved with the Campus Antifascist Network, and Kempster (Ghani) Songster, co-founder of The Redemption Project. For more information and/or to get involved: https://radicaleducationdepartment.wordpress.com/

[March 15 from 7PM to 9PM at Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Food Drive for West Virginia Teachers

  • March 7, 2018 6:40 pm

from Philly IWW

The Philadelphia Industrial Workers of the World is collecting non-perishable food items to donate to striking teachers in West Virginia. We will be driving the collected food to fellow workers next week.

If you want to contribute to the food drive, you can leave non-perishable food items in the food drive box at Wooden Shoe Books on south street.

Are you not sure what to donate? Here are some ideas:

1. Canned beans
2. Peanut butter
3. Canned fruit in fruit juice (not syrup)
4. Canned vegetables,
5. Rice
6. Quinoa
7. Nuts
8. Shelf-stable milk
9. Whole grain pasta
10. Pasta sauce
11. Cereal
12. Dried fruits

If the strike ends before we can deliver the food, we will be donating the food to the Cedar Haven Nursing Home strikers.

IWW Solidarity with West Virginia Teachers

  • March 5, 2018 11:48 am

from Instagram

We got your back West Virginia, solidarity photos are a start but we are also organizing a non perishables food drive this week that we will deliver next weekend! We will have a box for donation drop offs at wooden shoe by the end of the day and further updates will come out over the course of the week. #AnInjuryToOneIsAnInjuryToAll #SolidarityForever #55United #55Strong

The Teacher Strike in West Virginia: Interview with IWW Teacher Michael Mochaidean – JPS

  • March 3, 2018 1:35 pm

from Radical Education Department

Introduction

West Virginia has been rocked by a statewide strike by teachers, bus drivers, and other school employees.  Today, March 2nd, the strike enters its seventh day.

Beginning on February 22nd, workers shut down public schools in all 55 of West Virginia’s counties, rejecting abysmal and declining teacher pay and the state’s attack on public employees’ health insurance.  The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), one of the unions helping to organize the strikers, reports the following worker demands:

  • A natural gas severance tax that creates a self-sustaining source of revenue for PEIA [Public Employees Insurance Agency] and public employee pay.

  • No regressive taxes, which ultimately affect working-class families more than the wealthy elite.

  • A permanent tabling to any and all legislation pertaining to co-tenancy and joint development, which allow large natural gas industries to engulf local landowners.

  • A pay raise of 5% per year over the next half decade.

  • A permanent tabling to any and all legislation pertaining to charter schools, voucher systems, and any attempts to privatize public schools.

On February 27th, Governor Justice announced an agreement with three of the major teacher unions in the state: a 5% pay increase for teachers as well as a 3% increase for state employees generally. Union officials and the governor alike pleaded for school employees to return to work, despite the fact that key demands remain unmet.

On March 1st, however–defying the governor and official union leaders–teachers refused to return to work, swarming the capitol and chanting “It’s not over.”

Meanwhile, that same day, even the modest pay raise was refused in the state legislature.

Below is an interview conducted via email between John Schultz of RED and Michael Mochaidean, a West Virginia teacher and member of the IWW.

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JS: Can you give a brief account of how the statewide teachers’ strike in West Virginia began and developed?  What role did the rank-and-file play, and what role did the IWW as well as the major teacher unions (AFT, WVEA, etc.) play?

MM: I am speaking here as an individual within the IWW, not as a representative for the West Virginia IWW or the IWW broadly speaking. […]

The statewide strike did not originate with the unions and their leadership, but rather with the rank-and-file of their membership. It began as an effort by members to do away with the strategies of leadership that seemed stale and unable to adapt to changing times. For example, leadership had endorsed Governor Jim Justice as a Democrat, but he soon changed his party and was in opposition to the unions and teachers by and large, so we felt that this strategy of endorsing and electing conservative Democrats would only backfire in the future. This movement was entirely rank-and-file in its beginning and as it has progressed over the past week. Both AFT and WVEA have worked jointly on these issues at the county and state level, with many members acting on behalf of the other.

This cross union solidarity raised the consciousness among many teachers of the need to perhaps consider uniting the associations in the future. The IWW is relatively new to West Virginia in the sense that we have no official chapter in the state and only a few disconnected members. However, the outpouring of support from IWW members has been immense. Wobblies from the southern states reached out to me after they listened to my interview with IGD and we began organizing for more direct control over the unions. We developed brochures, pamphlets, and literature to be distributed throughout the state to keep up the momentum for grassroots organizing within and outside the official associations. We also set up a strike fund to fund possible leafleting campaigns, renting halls, inviting speakers, and the like.

JS: What conditions as well as organizing strategies do you think helped make this strike a broad and powerful one?  And what could others–not only unions, but social movements generally–learn from the West Virginia teachers?

MM: The anarcho-syndicalist tradition offers the best analysis, in my mind, as to how we can understand the teachers movement and its efficacy. The inherent contradictions in capitalism and the resource paradox nature of our state provided necessary conditions for public service personnel to slowly lose their rights as laborers. However, the history of West Virginia is one of mutual aid and community support that grows organically rather than through vanguard party structures.  Therefore, anarchist traditions of mutual aid and support are more palatable and grew within the associations themselves. Furthermore, by framing this discussion as one of public employees versus the state, we engaged in the syndicalist tradition that workers of those areas should determine their destinies.

I would say that other social movements should try to look at what is happening here in the state as part and parcel of our current late stage of capitalism. Focus the discourse on larger, interrelated issues, but at the heart, deal with one issue that can connect all others. For us, it was our insurance plan. By tying the issues in our insurance plan to larger issues of worker autonomy, capitalism, and corporate elites profiting off of our labor, we could bring in these other points simultaneously without losing traction on the issue of healthcare.

JS: On February 27th, it was announced that the teachers’ strike would end: Governor Jim Justice had come to an agreement with leaders from three of the major unions organizing the strike.  And yet the IWW-WVA points out that key demands haven’t been met: a tax on natural gas to help fund teachers’ health insurance and pay, for example.  What does this deal signify about the major unions and their relationship to workers?   

MM: Our statement [which can be found here] is reflective of the conditions of public employees who were overwhelmingly opposed to any compromise with the state that did not include long term funding for PEIA. The severance tax, proposed by Sen. Ojeda, has been continuously shot down by the legislature, in part because of the control the oil and natural gas industry lobby has in the state. Public employees seemed to feel that the deal was intended to fracture the unions and their support among all public employees, as well as the communities they serve. Thus, they decided to engage in another day of work stoppage (03/01) until these issues have been voted on.

We do not wish for rank-and-file members to leave their primary unions, but rather to engage in more direct efforts to hold their leadership accountable and ensure that whatever deals are made are done so with full knowledge by all of those involved.

JS: Teacher have often been on the front lines of union struggles in recent years.  What role do teachers play within the broader struggles of workers in America? What possibilities are there for teachers to connect with and support other kinds of workers?

MM: Teachers had to take to the front lines in this state because other public employees – police officers, DOH, EMTs – are unable to call a walkout because their careers are deemed essential. Since we still have a relatively strong union presence for educators in this state, we used this avenue to push for benefits for all public employees, knowing that if we succeeded, they would succeed, but also that if we failed, they would fail, too.

Teachers are the public face of our communities, and work stoppages by educators can highlight the complexities of local autonomy, funding, and the economic conditions of our time.

JS: Where does the IWW in West Virginia go from here?  Can you share some key short-term and long-term goals, not only as for teachers but beyond too?

MM: Short-term, we hope to push union leadership to not compromise on deals that their rank-and-file members reject. After all, it is the members that pay their salaries, so the members deserve to have a say in what is voted upon.

Long-term, we hope to grow the IWW in the state and in major areas where membership can be sustained. This strike has brought attention to issues we as an industrial union have been describing for over a century – the working class and the capitalist class have nothing in common. Business unions, while good in their own right, will make decisions for their members against their wishes. Since the IWW is entirely democratically run, we hope to raise awareness in the state about these ideas, how to continue organizing against capitalism and its effects, and connect the local struggles in our state with international struggles for worker solidarity.

JS: I’ll end with a broader question: what limits are worker struggles facing in the coming year, and what important possibilities are opening up for them?   What do you think is needed for those struggles to become broader, more coordinated, and more powerful?  

Currently, we are seeing electoral strategies touting the singular way that the working class can regain its rights in this state and in the country at large. The Democrats are pushing hard at midterms for a blue wave to bring a coalition of forces to Congress and state legislatures. However, in this state, we have a long history of conservative Democrats who differ little from the Republican Party. We do not wish to see this movement become simply another Wisconsin in 2011, where the working class struggle was diverted by establishment politicians into establishment politics. When that struggle ended, and we had lost, the momentum had been shattered. By not allowing our struggle to be co-opted, we can control the narrative, direct its course, and ultimately use direct action to gain our freedom.

Solidarity from WV.

Of Iron Fists and Velvet Gloves: The Role of the Democrats

  • March 3, 2018 1:29 pm

from Anathema

On February 8th, Congress passed a budget bill to end the government shutdown that did not include protections for DACA recipients. This budget would not have been possible without Democratic participation — in the Senate, 37 out of 49 Democrats voted for the bill, along with 73 House Democrats. Efforts by Congress in the following week to pass a new bill on immigration failed due to pressure from Trump’s administration. The fate of DACA now lies with the court system.

“Fascism, then, is a way of channeling discontent and hostilities into a consolidation of the status quo when democracy is no longer able to do so.”

Democrats had put up an appearance of resistance to the bill, symbolized by minority leader Nancy Pelosi holding the floor for eight hours to rail against it. Pelosi could have gone all out and used her leverage to whip up Democrats’ no votes, but chose not to. Despite the fact that, according to a Public Policy Polling/Center for American Progress poll, 58% of Americans wanted to include Dreamers as part of the deal to reopen the government, Democratic and Republican lawmakers colluded to ensure that this would not happen.

That means that what looks a lot like a new stage of an ethnic cleansing project by this settler colonial nation-state and its openly white nationalist presidential administration is set to move forward. Hundreds of thousands of people of color in the United States are facing the threat of deportation. In January, the government ended Temporary Protected Status for Salvadoreans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. DACA, which protects 690,000 people, expires on March 5.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed 226,000 people from the country in the 2017 fiscal year, a slight decrease from Obama’s record last year because of Trump’s enhancements to border security. ICE’s immigration arrests are up by 42%, however. At least 8% of the approximately 110,000 arrests are “collateral arrests,” i.e. other people that the agency finds and kidnaps along the way while arresting an intended target.

ICE has specifically targeted migrants who are leading activist resistance to U.S. immigration policy. In early January, ICE suddenly detained and deported Ravi Ragbir, the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City. This was the second arrest in one week by ICE of a leader in that coalition. Despite New York being a sanctuary city whose Democratic mayor has pledged safety for migrants, the NYPD colluded with ICE to arrest 18 people who attempted to stop the ICE vehicle from carrying away Ragbir.

Though the government has usually tried to excuse deportations by blaming migrants for their “criminal” records and going after low-income people, ICE arrests have now also started to target non-white American residents regardless of how much time they’ve spent in the country, their lack of criminal history, or their class position. In January, ICE kidnapped Syed Ahmed Jamal, a chemistry professor who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, outside his home, and deported Amer Adi Othman, a Youngstown, Ohio business owner who had lived in the U.S. for nearly 40 years.

Taking measures to limit legal immigration is also now on the table for the first time in many years. This is notable because authorities are only discussing restricting immigration from majority non-white countries, and further indicates that the primary motivation on issues of immigration, on the part of both the Trump administration and his grassroots supporters, is to keep the U.S. a majority-white nation-state.

The U.S. is heightening its borderline-fascist state polices, and Democrats have shown they will go along with anything when the stability of the federal government is at stake. Regardless of individual lawmakers’ reasons for their decisions — the inner workings of which are nearly impossible for lowly plebian commentators like ourselves to know anyway — both political parties now seem willing to toe the line between so-called democracy and fascism in order to deal with the escalating crisis of capitalism and the accompanying threat of mass uprisings.

Because the state’s function is to unify civil society in such a way that preserves the economic system, fascism is not a subversion of capital, but a tendency that, like representative democracy, the state can turn to so as to maintain order. Historically, signs of a crisis in the state’s ability to maintain social cohesion have included an inability by democratic states to impose order after waves of revolts had been snuffed out, continual governmental crises, and imaginary plots against the nation. As with the current U.S. administration, states often respond to such crises by inventing an internal enemy and deflecting domestic conflicts by pursuing militaristic projects abroad.

The current crisis of capital requires a consolidation of force in the hands of the federal government, which either instating a dictatorship or pursuing more modest proto-fascist measures can accomplish. As in Spain, Germany, and Italy in the first half of the last century, economic misery and the rebellions it has produced in the U.S. are currently being channeled into anti-fascism, on one side (which tends to deprive revolutionary tendencies of their original anti-capitalist content) and grassroots fascism that rallies to consolidate the current administration. Meanwhile, Trump’s administration continues to accumulate resources for its police and military forces, fortify its borders, blame migrants and radicals, mysteriously kill off or deport black and brown rebels and activists, and threaten large-scale warfare abroad.

As economic theorist Gilles Dauvé noted in 1998, “An essential aspect of fascism is its birth in the streets, its use of disorder to impose order, its mobilization of the old middle classes crazed by their own decline, and its regeneration, from without, of a state unable to deal with the crisis of capitalism. Fascism was an effort of the bourgeoisie to forcibly tame its own contradictions, to turn working class methods of mobilization to its own advantage, and to deploy all the resources of the modern state, first against an internal enemy, then against an external one” (Endnotes Vol. I, 23-24).

Fascism, then, is a way of channeling discontent and hostilities into a consolidation of the status quo when democracy is no longer able to do so. Fascism, or proto-fascist governance like what we’re currently seeing in the U.S., historically has thrived off of grassroots support that mimics revolution, while drawing anti-capitalist tendencies into a “popular front” approach that gives control back to more liberal agents and institutions and no longer threatens to totally transform the miserable conditions of our lives.

Many radicals and progressives recognize that there’s a rupture in U.S. society and have in response called for rebuilding democratic power — for example, as Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America have done. This mass movement strategy should be avoided, as it is another way of rebuilding the social unity that capital needs.

Pursuing false alliances with those who want to defuse hostilities and reform the socioeconomic system will not help us get free. The ruptures and antagonisms within this society are what the state is straining to reconcile because they threaten capitalism — they are serious disadvantages for capital, and thus advantages for us. In the face of the state’s white supremacist maneuvers, we can try various short-term strategies depending on our inclinations — for example, looking out for those who will first be targeted, helping people cross the border, or attacking agencies like ICE and impeding their ability to function. But ultimately it is the borders, and capital along with it, that must go.

Gun Control: Some Critical Thoughts in a Historical Context

  • March 3, 2018 1:26 pm

from Anathema

There have been so many mass shootings in recent years that they rarely get national coverage unless they set a new record, precedent, or it is a slow news day. They have been on the rise to such a degree that the United States has been averaging one school-specific shooting a week. In the aftermath, wherever the shooting occurs, blame is always assigned to political agendas, religious radicalism, advanced weaponry, mental health, or whitewashed for the sake of maintaining order in a way that assigns no blame to “random” or “thoughtless” crimes – the latter being most often assigned to white male shooters. But the return to calls for gun control most disempower the marginalized and reinforce the same authority that murders with impunity.

Mass shootings are said to have begun with a white military veteran in Camden, NJ in 1949, who bought the Luger he used in Philadelphia, the day after he had felt scorned by a lover. The story is too familiar, but the idea that this was the first mass shooting ignores the massacres of indigenous people on this continent by white settler-colonialists that have contributed to Native American genocide (like the nearby Conestoga Massacre of 1763, at least some of which occurred without guns). Still, it is of note in that “the first mass shooter” murdered 13 people and wounded 3 with only a pistol, and not anything resembling the AR-15 that has been so focused on lately. More to the point, mass killings preceded the existence of semi-automatic weapons and largely targeted non-white people.

It was only when non-white people picked up the gun to defend themselves that gun control became a popular political stance. Some of the less-remembered gun control advocates of the past include a post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan, the National Rifle Association, and California Governor Ronald Reagan, who sought to prevent Black Panthers from carrying loaded rifles while patrolling their neighborhoods or protesting at government buildings. Before Reagan signed the bill that outlawed such practices, there were reported occurrences of Black Panthers avoiding unjustified arrest and murder when white police stopped and harassed them on the street by being armed.

Presumably, little has changed from the legal lynchings of the past except that the police have less to fear from civilian elements, as they continue to be criminalized and othered without the fear of return fire as reprisal. Shootings of police in Camden, NJ and upstate PA, which occurred last year after police approached young men, have even been described as self-defense because the police have been known to shoot people with similar profiles for little or nothing in other situations, often to be exonerated for their transgressions later. Gun control has historically sought to keep guns out of the hands of black and brown folks, when it is clear that a gun in hand could keep them alive.

While sympathies lie with those trying to reduce violence in their inner city communities through gun control, it still fails to address the problem. Inner city violence often pits the most marginalized against each other, in attempts to overcome the violence of poverty thrust upon them. The logic of capital, after all, being that one must conquer others in order to move up in the economic strata. As such, one cannot end inner city violence without abolishing capital, as hierarchies (and poverty) are necessary to its operation, as it institutionally brings down violence from the upper echelons onto the lower.

This is why elements of left and anarchist circles have recently renewed advocacy for arming of marginalized peoples, in addition to bringing up concerns regarding civil war with conservative elements that tend to be better armed and more familiar with weaponry. The same conservative element that has been doing research on the best “truck gun” with which to “defend” themselves against protesters who tend to disrupt traffic, as was written about in a recent issue of Guns & Ammo magazine.

The same political associates of white supremacist organizations that are currently calling for armed escalations and lone-wolf murders of their opposition – organizations of which many mass shooters have been members. This, again, in a country where the first machine gun, invented by Richard Gattling, was created to deal with anarchists and other dissenters.

There is no need for romanticization of armed conflict and related imagery, but there is a real need to know how to defend ourselves from the threats we face. And the threats we face include murderous white supremacists, governments, and even gun manufacturers, who favor disarming and killing dissenters whenever they can get away with it – indeed there is significant historical precedent from Haymarket, to massacres of striking workers and their families, to the biased trials and execution of “reds.”

Yet none of this gets down to perhaps the most significant contributing factor to an increasingly violent society – the continued alienation by and violence of civilization at large. The division of labor, especially along gendered lines, and the creation of private property that resulted from the agrarian revolution that birthed civilization marked a notable development in the existence of hierarchies. Gender and racial divisions might not exist on the same level, if at all, without this development. The degradation of the environment, our separation from the natural world, and our separation from each other have been steps in a process that have increased rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, in addition to mass shootings. The New York Times reported a steady increase of suicides over the last 30 years, with 42,773 recorded in 2014 – not a sign of an healthy society.

In such a society, built on and maintained by violence, any attack on its institutions can be painted by the marginalized as self-defense. But framing the argument is perhaps less interesting than an attack that actually inspires and destabilizes, without the possibility of recuperation.

Gun control won’t stop the police from murdering people every single day. It won’t stop the military from imperializing and murdering abroad. It makes sure those forces are likely to be the few who have guns. Gun control won’t stop the cycle of violence perpetuated by poverty and authority. Those most prone to suffering violence at the hands of institutional oppressors are the ones whose survival is most inhibited by those measures, including those that intend to dismantle the root causes of those oppressions. The patriarchal and white supremacist entitlement that empowers both individual and group “mass shooters” can only be halted after the toppling of institutions that teach them they are right (i.e. churches, schools, government). And the alienation that drives people to senselessly murder will only cease after unplugging a civilization that drives us apart, mediating interactions through screens and algorithms, to reconnect with a simpler way of life.

Philadelphia, PA: Friendly Fire Retreat to Spark a Religious Revolutionary Fire, May 1st-3rd

  • February 27, 2018 9:06 pm

from It’s Going Down

The following is a call for a gathering in Philadelphia, PA from May 1st to May 3rd.

Local Quakers and friendly mystics from around the so-called “United States” are gathering outside of so-called “Philadelphia,” from May 1-3rd for direct action, worship, collaboration, mysticism, and fellowship to stir-up an emerging revolutionary Christian/religious Left. We invite mystics and people of faith from all traditions who share our struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Our desire for this retreat is it will serve to strengthen and connect the forming Christian/religious left. This retreat is coming at a time when we are seeing our institutions of religion crumble before our eyes as the evangelical Right is endorsing fascism, white supremacy, and xenophobia. The Friendly Fire Collective is a loose network of anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist Christians and mystics seeking to eradicate this institution and share in the act of Creation by building new religious traditions that lift up the oppressed instead of tearing them down.

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In the Spirit of International Workers’ Day, we will be participating in various direct actions which are currently being planned by our ever growing planning committee. The retreat fee will be a sliding scale of $45-95 and we will have scholarships available to ensure accessibility. If you would like to donate to allow poor, qpoc, and other marginalized people come to our event please email us.

For safety concerns we will not be discussing the location of our event until a few weeks out.

We are currently taking applications for the May Day retreat! Apply here!

For more information: friendlyfireinfo@protonmail.com https://friendlyfirecollective.wordpress.com

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Reflections on Time and Monuments: 14 Photographs and and Essay

  • February 26, 2018 8:55 pm

From Radical Education Department

You can find another RED article by the author on monuments here.

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“What time is it?” asks artist Tyree Guyton in his mural installation at Kensington, Philadelphia. A question I take to asks more than what the clocks show at the present moment. As if the name of the installation, The Times –in plural, not the singular time of the one accurate clock– asks how many times are there that order this monumental space, how many temporalities cross-cut each other at the walls of that old Kensington factory, now being a special installation within the city wide temporary public art and history project: Monument Lab.

Monument Lab: A Public Art and History Project was a temporary installation of monuments across 10 sites of Philadelphia, produced by a curatorial team and Mural Arts Philadelphia. It centered on an overarching question: “What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia?” which is posed initially to 20 artists. It exhibits artists’ responses in the form of temporary monuments at 10 different publics sites between September 16th and November 19th, 2017. Installations accompany with research laboratories where visitors participate through proposing their appropriate monuments for the current city of Philadelphia, and shared with public on a mapped here. I think it is fair to say that Monument Lab was a majestic collective inquiry and experimentation on the ordering of public spaces of the city with art installations and citizen participations.

The project was topical as well. It opened within the heated national debate around the politics of the monuments, primarily of the confederate monuments in the Southern states and protests for the removal of Frank Rizzo monument at Philadelphia’s Thomas Paine Plaza. It provided a local venue to carry out the debate on a proper monument in a positive form of proposing new monuments that would tell the story of Philadelphia. Monument Lab Research Director Laurie Allen’s call in the project’s newspaper summarizes the historical-political starting point of the project: “Our monuments have meaning. They are city’s way of telling its story, of picking out moments in history for elevation, and for making a statement about who and what deserves to be honored and remembered. In 2017, we must recognize that the story told by our monuments is not our city’s full history. Help us elevate a richer reading of our history and move creatively toward a better future” (3).

Some of Lab monuments, such as Sharon Hayes’ “If They Should Ask” at Rittenhouse Square, marks precisely this selective historiography of the existing monuments in Philadelphia. Hayes problematizes that in the entire city there are only two monuments that are dedicated to women: French heroine Joan of Arc and Bostonian Quaker Mary Dyer. By half-scaling nine pedestals of the existing monuments in Philadelphia and writing dozens of names of public women figures from the Philadelphia-area on the pedestals, Hayes monumentalizes the absence of women’s monuments and powerfully makes the case for the exclusion of women in the public memory.

Rittenhouse Square

“A monument” writes Jane Golden, the executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia, is what “commemorates something or someone, in order to uplift and keep it in public memory –an enduring symbol.“[1] Monuments are mostly[2] deliberate symbols engrained in the build environment of the city/town that encapsulates a particular past to carry it to the future. Most monuments are symbols of the state and commemorate the founding acts and heroes of the nation to remind whose heritage that land is loyal to. For critics such as Kim Dovey, “Public monuments often use the memory of a past use of force by the state to signify such future possibility.”[3] Others uplift political principles such as the human rights monuments, cultural figures or commemorate past tragedies such as genocide memorials. Each monument’s commemoration of the past has a particular purpose in the present to frame future social and political relations. Monuments’ symbolic universe dictate a certain code of conduct, a way of thinking and acting in the public, and depend on the material they are made and the surrounding social-political relations, they usually do so for long durations.

Art historian William J.T. Mitchell, in his lecture “What do Monuments Want?” observes that the desire of the monument is “to live forever, to defeat death and history.” He says that they express power and desire to immortality while at the same time; almost all of the monuments eventually scum to the blows of history and crumble. Monuments are temporal, in both sense of the term. They are made to remain intact over time, defeat death and history, but they are also products of history and the social-political relations that erect or remove them. In that sense, the time of the monument is not less frail than human time in the longue durée.  Nevertheless, when it is intact and granted its demand of honor, monuments’ time poses a contrast to human temporality. Our mobility and short life span stand out against the background of monuments’ claim to stability and immortality.

Lab’s exhibit of monuments, installed for a short period of time, defeats this conventional logic of monument-time from the outset. It occupies what art critic Krauss Rosalind calls a “negative condition of the monument” where monument becomes nomadic by resigning its usual position of established place and entering into a field of “sitelessness, or homelessness, an absolute loss of place.”[4] With temporary monuments, Lab not only experiments with various monumental contents fitting for Philadelphia, but also questions the temporal logic of monumentality.

The purpose of this photography project is to contemplate on the contrast between the time of monuments and that of human beings against the background of the questions Monument Lab opens up. It can be considered as a visual dialogue with, or maybe rather an ocular ode to, the artists, curators and participants of the Monument Lab. Maybe it is even a photographic attempt to immortalize the passing of multiple times at each monumental site before they migrate to their next location. Each photograph in the series is taken with the same long exposure technique using an ND filter in daylight, which allows the photographic moment to be as long as 25 seconds. I am grateful to people who kindly accepted to be in the frames even though their faces are not really recognizable.

You can view all the images here: