Queercore summer jamz pealing stentorian out of my car radio through the mean streets of Tuscaloosa.
Man, this shirt. This shirt.
Made in Nablus: Crazy Israeli PM quotes- REBLOG please
Golda Mier (PM of Israel from 1969-1974):
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
David Ben Gurion (PM of Israel…
Stars Fell On Alabama—> Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Anarchists All Radicals Should Pay Attention To
I call myself an anarchist, despite having major problems with anarchism as a philosophy, methodology, and milieu (namely— confusing radical culture with radical movement, confusing tactics and strategy [or straight-up ignoring the latter], failure to adequately address race and colonialism, and those goddamned punk semi-rattail/semi-mullett haircuts I see every time I’m in Richmond). Furthermore, I think the example set by classical anarchists is by large so problematic as to be approach only with caution and an extremely critical lens. Consequently, I think that American anarchists have far more to gain from reading about the Black and Chicano freedom struggles, anti-colonialism/indigenous movements, and feminists of color/from the Global South than from reading canonical anarchist sources. Our strongest conceptual tools for anarchism (if defined as anti-authoritarian, participatory movements against oppression) have come from non-anarchists, and the movements most powerfully and effectively pursuing the goals and values anarchists share seldom identify as anarchists.
Notwithstanding these qualms, I do think there are anarchists who in the past twenty years, have written luculently to refocus the anarchist movement(s) and reenvision an anarchism that can be a useful conceptual framework and puissant praxis in resisting oppression in the 21st century. Hard as it may be to sort through the wheat and chaff in anarchist thought, I do think that it would behoove radicals in general to familiarize themselves with:
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin— Ervin’s Anarchism and the Black Revolution never truly became the classic that it deserves to be. While I think that Ervin’s analysis of race vis a vis class can feel a little underdeveloped (and I think all radicals would do well to check out some whiteness studies scholars like Noel Ignatiev, as well as WEB Dubois’s best works like Black Reconstruction), his drive for Black Autonomism contains a number of important lessons for anarchists, especially white anarchists who refuse to adequately examine the ways their whiteness stultifies their would-be movements. I encourage anarchists to seek out anti-colonial socialists to fill some of the larger gulfs in anarchist thought, but I think that Ervin’s powerful voice for anti-authoritarianism can be useful for non-anarchist radicals to examine gaps in their own thought. Link: Anarchism and Black Revolution http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-black-revolution-lorenzo-ervin Really cool speech via People of Color Organize: http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/podcasts/poco-podcast/podcast-lorenzo-komboa-ervin-speaks-community-organizing/
Ashanti Alston— Like Ervin, Alston is a veteran of militant groups in the Black freedom struggle. And, like Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin, Alston searched in prison for a conceptual framework for future movements for liberation, and found anarchism. Alston’s most frequently reproduced work, “Beyond Nationalism but not Without It”, is easily available on the internet.
Andrej Grubacic— Grubacic is a leading light in “new anarchism”, which promotes mutual learning, understanding, and organizing with Marxists, and in that spirit, he co-authored Wobblies and Zapatistas with Staughton Lynd, which is pretty cool. His most important work, however, is contained in his book Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! which argues positively for a “balkanization from below”— that is, a series of interlocked networks which serve to decentralize power and revolutionize society in a plurinational setting. If anarchists ignored and rejected nationalism (and, therefore sat out of many of the most important struggles of the 20th century) and state socialists were too eager to embrace authoritarian nation-states as a solution to colonialism, Grubacic has, perhaps, hinted at a revolutionary and visionary road not taken. Anarchists and communists both deserve to take his meditations into consideration. I can’t really find any of my favorite writings of his online, but on Youtube there’s some panel discussions he’s been on that are at least enjoyable, if not entirely challenging.
David Graeber— As recently as a couple of years ago, I adored Graeber. Nowadays, I’m more ambivalent. I think his approach to autonomia is a little half-baked, but his emphasis on prefigurative politics (which, sadly, is sometimes erroneously presented as a replacement for strategy) open a number of pathways for the left. Graeber’s imaginative writings, ability to dissect complex academic trends with a light, easy-to-read feel, and his tendency to write critically without being dismissive, sectarian, or unfair make him a must-read in terms of new anarchism. I see in Graeber a lot of what is both tragically wrong and portentously right in anarchism. His two books I would most highly recommend are Possibilities (essays from which are freely and easily available online!) and Direct Action: an Ethnography, which provides an apologetic but surprisingly brilliant account of anarchism’s oft-misunderstood summit-hopping years (not that we ought to go back to that bygone era with all its failings, but perhaps we should seek to understand it better).
Cindy Milstein— Milstein is very much cut from the same ideological cloth as Grubacic (and most of those panel videos on Youtube to which I alluded feature Milstein as well), but I think the thing I like most about Milstein is her ability to break down anarchism’s fundamentals in a way that points to paths for the future rather than a hagiographic portrait of moments past. Consequently, I think she’s a great starting point for a non-anarchist, left-leaning person who seeks to understand what anarchism means as well as for party-line Marxists who cite anarchism as petit bourgeois tripe to be dismissed out-of-hand (although some of anarchist thought like CrimethInc pretty much does fit that bill, admittedly) without critically engaging both its strengths and limitations. Milstein’s slim volume Anarchism and its Aspirations is without a doubt one of top sources I’d recommend to someone unfamiliar with anarchism’s basics. I only wish that I had had such a clear and succinct entry point when I was first interested in anarchism as a teenager.
Joel Olson— I consider Olson to be the #1 anarchist to read by anarchists and other radicals alike. Olson stresses constituency-building, movement-building, and boldly places critical race analysis at the fore of anarchist praxis. He’s long been a critic of looser anarchist networks and has worked with Bring the Ruckus and the Repeal Coalition in Arizona. His work speaks for itself, and I’d encourage every to read his amazingly good essay “Between Infoshops and Insurrection” (http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20090617210800420), his book The Abolition of White Democracy, and watch his videos on fanaticism on Youtube (I can’t wait until his research on that topic appears in print!).
New Ampere!!!
Jesus motherfucking Christ, I didn’t even know Ampere was coming up with a new record until about twenty minutes ago, but it looks like you can stream the whole thing online! And, unsurprisingly, it’s amazing! My only complaint is that the (probably lambent, Situationist-inspired) lyrics are nowhere to be found, and I sure as hell can’t make them out from the stream. Still, this rules.
I just threw up in my mouth a little. Okay, more like a lottle.
I’m using these for future titles for libarry school papers. Would have come in handy when I was scrambling to name my term paper on strategies for LGBTIQ-theory collections development in academic institutions.
For real, though, book-hating and heterosexism are pretty much tied for being my second least favorite things ever, after Stone Temple Pilots.
First of the month. Gonna go to the plasma center in a few minutes, and I’m getting my first paycheck from my new job on Friday! Stoked!
Spoonboy talks about sexism in the punk scene
This is a really good essay, I highly suggest reading it.
If one day I can be half as eloquent as Spoons, or half as compassionate, I’ll be a happy non-gender-aligned individual.
I thought Spoons’ essay was pretty dead-on, and there’s definitely a lot in it that merits further discussion. I think this paragraph is a pretty good example of that:
And recognizing that our male dominated culture is fucked up doesn’t make you a self-hating man, either. When I first heard Bikini Kill, it was fucking thrilling. Hearing someone lash out against dominant sexist attitudes wasn’t exciting in some sort of “oh good for women, they’re standing up for themselves,” type of way. It was liberating to hear someone take on those traditional expressions of masculinity, because I hated the ways I was expected to act as a man. I hated the toughness and numbness that was expected from men, because I wanted to be able to express my emotions without fear of ridicule. I hated the predatory way that men acted towards women, because I wanted to be free to have meaningful relationships with women. Likewise, I hated the homophobia, because I wanted to have meaningful relationships with the men in my life. I see men around me all the time who refuse to show any signs of vulnerability for fear of appearing feminine, and they tend to cut themselves off emotionally from the world. It’s fucking sad. I see men all the time who only view their relationships in terms of conquest, and I can’t think of one of them who has a healthy emotional life. Breaking down ideas around male superiority and masculinity is absolutely in mens’ best interests. In a punk context, I can say with certainty that the scenes I’ve visited that were the most gender inclusive have always been the most exciting and thriving music communities. There’s nothing to be gained for men in maintaining the boy’s club.
I think I kind of disagree with the last line. I think members of privileged groups (in my case, cis-gendered men) have competing interesting in both maintaining and destroying the systems which privilege us. Like Spoonboy says in his article, there are plenty of punk shows in which 100% of folks in the bands are men. Basically, space is made for men at the expense of space for women. The fact that there’s disproportionate space for men in bands, on stages, and in basements seems to me to be a material benefit of sexism for cis-guys.
And yet, I think Spoonboy’s other points in the paragraph summarize why cis-men should strive to make more inclusive spaces. While our material interests are with the system that privileges us, I think our imaginative interests lie elsewhere. My first experience with feminism was through riot grrrl— a Baltimore-based band called Die Cheerleader Die played at a skaterink in the Western, more rural part of my home county and totally blew me away, and like Spoonboy my discovery of bands like Bikini Kill (and, not to mention the politics, experiences, and viewpoints that animated them) was a watershed moment in my life; the politics of anarchism, feminism, etc. ignited an ebullience in me that convinced me that unjust systems which deal white, middle-class, cis-men like me to the top are still worth resisting. The joy, meaning, and purpose that come with struggling for a new world can convince privileged people to loosen their grip on oppressive systems and cast their lot with the struggles of oppressed and less privileged folks.
Challenging, destroying, and replacing systems of privilege and oppression is a profoundly creative project, and while those most affected/most oppressed should be allowed a central space in this currents, even those of us materially invested in oppressive systems do have much to gain in probing our imaginations to create more equitable, liberatory social arrangements designed to better meet everyone’s needs.
(Source: nodivision)
