Left Forum 2010
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD:
Rekindling the Radical Imagination

March 19-21
Pace University
One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038

Session 1: SATURDAY, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Post-Identity Politcs
W-615
Kevin Alexander Gray - Author of Waiting for Lightening to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics

Lessons from Latin American Social Movements for a US in Crisis
W612
Ben Dangl - Author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia
Marina Sitrin - Editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

Session 2: SATURDAY, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Reimagining Society: The Nature of the Task
Schimmel
Chris Spannos (Chair) - Editor of Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century
Michael Albert - Author of Moving Forward: Program for a Participatory Economy

Session 3: SATURDAY, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

A Panel Discussion on Anarchism and Marxism
W510
Cindy Milstein - Author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations

Envisioning Real Utopias
W612
Peter Staudenmaier - Co-author of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience

Envisioning Self-Governance
E328
Cindy Milstein - Author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations

Academic Repression Book Talk
W602
Theory and Action
A panel of contributors to Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex
Anthony J. Nocella, II (Chair)
Liat Ben-Moshe and Dr. Caroline Kaltefleiter
Victoria Fontan
Deric Shannon

Rethinking the National Question in the United States
W610
Fred Ho - Editor of Legacy to Liberation: Politics & Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America

Ten Years Later: Organizers Reflect on the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests
W507
Chris Dixon (Chair) Contributor to The Battle of the Story of “The Battle of Seattle”

Horizontalism and Grassroots Democracy in the Americas
W503
Marina Sitrin - Editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

SESSION 5: SUNDAY, 10:00 AM - 11:50 PM

Marxism and Anarchism: The Relevance of Radical Traditions Today
W605
Peter Staudenmaier - Co-author of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience

SESSION 6: SUNDAY, 12:00 - 2:00 PM

Punk Rock: Cultural Space For Transformative Politics?
W621
Josh MacPhee - Co-editor of Realizing the Impossible: Art against Authority

Envisioning a Post Sexist Society
W609
Chris Spannos (Chair) - Editor of Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century

SESSION 7: SUNDAY, 3:00 – 4:50 PM

Impacts of and Responses to Climate Change
Schimmel
Christian Parenti - Author of Taking Liberties: Policing, Prisons, and Surveillance in an Age of Crisis

Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition
Student Union
Cindy Milstein - Author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations

The Left in a Post-Racial United States
E323
Fred Ho - Editor of Legacy to Liberation: Politics & Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America

Reimagining a New Economic System
W510
Michael Albert - Author of Moving Forward: Program for a Participatory Economy

5:30 PM Sunday CLOSING PLENARY

Rekindling the Radical Imagination
Closing Address: Noam Chomsky -Author of Chomsky on Anarchism, At War with Asia, Radical Priorities, Language and Politics, Imperial Grand Strategy, and The Imperial Presidency

Last night, the window of their borrowed car was smashed while it was parked in a quiet Berkeley neighborhood, resulting in the loss of hundreds of dollars of books, pamphlets, videos, and other merchandise, as well as a video projector and a number of external hard-drives and other electronic equipment. On top of the cost of gas and travel across the US and back again, this is a staggering financial blow.

The Greeks need your help to continue the tour, and recoup their losses (especially the video projector, which was owned by their collective in Greece). If you are able to make a donation to help defray the expenses of window repair, and replacement equipment and stock, please do so! Your donation would be greatly appreciated - any and all donations received through the button below will go directly to our Greek friends. Please help out if you can!

Here’s a link to some of the content from the first issue. Hopefully folks out there will see fit to contribute to the paper; not for Tommy’s sake, but because he’s bottom-lining a new (tried and true?) way to communicate our views to potential comrades. There’s a whole world to win, and Tommy’s not gonna get bogged down debating each and every nuance of your favored political persuasion. As every decent anarchist paper has done throughout history, Holler seeks to make our ideas known and accepted by those outside our circles, while holding the line.

To get a copy. contact Tommy (POB 40656, SF, CA 94140) or ask for one to be included in your next AK order. We’ve got a bundle or two that we’re including in mailorder shipments as you read this.

Why a local newspaper? Why now?

A free newspaper is the only way I see an individual reaching out to complete strangers, outside of the internet, and building some coherent base of radical face-to-face democracy. If you sell it, it ends up in only certain bookstores, and only certain people will pick it up. It’s not something I think I should be doing with my inability to write journalistic concise articles, or that I think I will excel at, but it’s a push forward for myself personally, even if only as an act of desperation. It is not simply a venue for news, facts, and horrors that the media leaves out—though on the surface that may appear to be its purpose—but a connecting point for strangers to make some attempt at bottom-up resistance.

What’s the editorial vision for the paper? Where is Holler from the Rooftops coming from? And whom do you see as the audience?

If I don’t quit—as I consider every other day, since I have that American infection of desiring immediate gratification—I would like it to be a left socialist/anarchist venue for what tiny portion of the masses that it can reach. Perhaps a mixture of the Anderson Valley Advertiser or Counterpunch, mixed with the urgency of old time anarchist papers such as the Masses and Rocker’s Arbeter Fraynd. As an editor, my main goals would be to find ten or more people to contribute, create a lengthy letter section, and act as a filter on a hard-line libertarian socialist viewpoint.

There are not many choices, many ways to look at history or present day problems, or two sides to every story. There is only one ethical “common ground” in which I view the choices for the future, and it is certainly not original, nor is it a naïve, unsubstantiated belief in human needs or human nature. I find no value whatsoever in presenting a Trotskyist or Leninist version of socialism, or revolution. The letters section is another thing. I will print many views there.

On the look of the first issue though, the paper definitely needs more workers’ voices that are not barking this intransigent view, but speaking from experience and the heart.

The last thing I want it to be is Tommy’s monthly rant, which the first issue is.

The audience is meant to be the workers, small business owners, people who still might even, after all the shit that is coming down, call themselves middle class….who have come to the obvious conclusion that there has to be another future, and we have to start building the road now. As I have handed out hundreds to complete strangers, and seen surprise and interest, I would say my overuse of the word “atomization” is not wrong. We live among millions in the USA that are just so sick of the experts and politicians, and in the past twenty years, due to great left book publishers and the internet, there are millions educated about how change really comes about. I don’t believe this paper will have anything to do with a large “spark.” I’m too cynical for that. But I do believe I have to try to create some kindling. To predict what is going to happen shortly in our lives, can either be a cynical intellectual exercise that brings on despair and inaction, or it can be a reasoned and optimistic heartfelt outlook that demands all contact possible to find real community based on physical proximity and common desires.

Your intention is for Holler to become a monthly paper. Tell us about the local independent and radical media in SF and what a paper like yours has to offer.

There is no mass radical print in the bay area. A strange thing in itself. There are tens of thousands in the bay area doing amazing organizing work, mutual aid, and education projects.  The people here have the hearts and minds capable even of a long general strike against the wars. I doubt I can spark that. And I can’t change the defeatist “it can’t happen here” mindset absorbed from the ruling class’ and elites’ propaganda, among a large enough number of people. …I don’t think so anyway… More simply, it is a tangible thing you or I can pass on. Thirty percent of the country doesn’t even go on the web still, let alone to far left discussion forums. Yes, I have a problem with people relying on the internet thing as a main source of discussion. I’ve spent years in discussion forums online. Outside of its indispensable use as a great organizing avenue for actions and its obvious use as a source of information and cheap fast communication, when it comes to a “discussion forum,” …I find it dogmatic and flywheel and most often dominated by men who have too much time on their hands…(myself included for years). There is nothing comparable to face-to-face democracy. It creates responsibility and human bonds: comradery comes from the socialistic desires inside all of us. Typing alone is typing alone.

Where can locals find copies?

I foolishly thought I could somehow keep a free paper stocked all up and down 24th street and in the Valencia street bookstores. Uh, it’s free, and completely different than what people are used to in general—so every stack is gone in a day! So for now, I would say I can’t even answer that question truthfully. I live at Folsom and 24th…  cafes around there and places like Café Boheme at Mission and at Modern Times bookstore on Valencia…Bound Together on Haight…It will take time to get a routine set up, and find the places that appreciate it, and hopefully advertise too. Then again, someone can always buy a stamp and put a dollar in an envelope. Friends are helping spread it around. I am actually working more on getting advertising (cuz I can only afford half the printing costs for next two issues), and handing it out in person than worrying about constant restocking. I need the immediate people contact and encouragement and discussion now, and that is really the papers’ purpose, from a personal survival perspective. I would think by issue three, there will be twenty or so main places where it will always be available.

Tell us about your People’s Councils idea. The Councils are definitely rooted in your conception of anarchism, explain what they are and how you see them taking off in SF.

Anti-capitalist non-party-orientated bottom-up direct democracy to form a mass strong enough to do mutual aid locally in the form of occupying housing, or seizing unused manufacturing as in Argentina recently (Occupy, Resist, Produce), perhaps setting up direct supply lines to farmers as things dive into a real economic depression…and nonviolent direct action in all ways for land and liberty, and a more effective and militant attack against our government’s militarism and involvement in the financial and militaristic strangulation of worldwide worker and land and liberty movements. … I still can’t get my head right on why even spurts don’t seem to be happening here. Where are all the experienced organizers and what are the great minds thinking here? Isn’t it obvious that we need a very anarchist “political” and social bottom-up worker intelligentsia, the real rabble, not those Leninist centralizing committee types, to be on the streets organizing a million… to put dents in the USA mass murder machine, and throw some fear back at the ruling class? Don’t even call it revolutionary, or anarchist, if the people don’t want some over reaching banner. But call it immediately necessary if we are to build any roads for a better future. There is nothing the bourgeois political parties fear more than multi-colored libertarian peoples’ organizations. There are no shortage of examples of people outside the USA ten times more “overloaded” or overworked than us, and threatened with death squads just for putting out a newspaper… being heroic and profoundly forward looking and achieving so much in so short of time. It sure seems like a bust, me just throwing this out in the first issue with only a handful of people even actively interested. But insert that Gramsci quote here.

Papers aren’t the easiest things in the world to produce. What sort of help are you looking for?

Investigative reporting…and ..contributions of work stories, life stories…a handful of people that will make it a “must read” ….entertaining and humorous too…with all the ironies and engaging humanist color of living in resistance, living in a mashed up spat-upon society,  and living for love and joy also. If it continues to be my rant for three more issues, it should stop.

I tried to add more humor/more attractive city stories… but couldn’t. Except when I’m drunk or at work, I don’t have a sense of humor or a “writer’s eye” anymore. If I could help the new bell hooks, James Baldwins, Nelson Algrens, and Arhundhati Roys, find their voice, that in itself would be a victory.

Being a long-time resident of San Francisco and a rabble-rousing anarchist with a long pedigree, what keeps you going?

My pedigree is really lacking in any organizational work. I learned long ago I don’t have the personality or patience for small meetings and small demonstrative actions. I’ve heard the real reason I still get such respect from REAL organizers and fellow workers, is that I don’t back down and I haven’t gotten soft.  I’ve been in underground leftist bands for over twenty years. I think that is the extent of it. When I look at the rest of the world, I don’t take my blank resume as such a big fault. The learned and experienced advise and coordinate but never really lead people to big gains. Only in an organized militant mass via free association do I believe effective change takes place…wherein creative initiative of each individual magnifies and flourishes….

I feed like a leech off of inspiration of the people doing the good work. I assemble it all like building blocks. I live for what people in Mexico and Bolivia are doing. I live for the potential that smolders and fizzles here…Then I find a book like AK’s Direct Action an eye opening and wonderful inspiring read….though I would never participate in such one-off demonstrations for many reasons. I fed off the unquestioning friendship of so many people at that 6th St. Books peoples’ center I tried. Straddling two worlds, I guess….the gutter to the suburban runaway. I’ve always appreciated the voice of an ex-junkie or ex-con more than the people I should take advice from. On a base human level, I’m only able to continue with fists up, because of a small amount of friends such as Zach, Nick, Ramsey, Mike M, Caroline, Mary Gail, and recently co-workers and my “bosses” at Last Gasp…along with ex-co-workers from Mordam Records and people like Joe B., Mellisa M. ….and that stranger you run into once a week…that in just a short time…with a sideways glance and a loaded comment…lets you know…none of us are alone….we just act and react like we are.

In the meantime, our friends in the Pacific Northwest and Ontario have got a great couple of weeks ahead of them: Matt Hern tours the NW next week, and Michael Schmidt, South African co-author of the excellent Black Flame, tours Ontario, with the help of Common Cause. Check out the full schedules below!

And, note: we’re currently looking for funding to bring both Lucien van der Walt (Black Flame) and Raul Zibechi (Dispersing Power) to the US this summer/fall. So please get in contact if you happen to work with an organization or a university that might be willing to cover travel costs for either of these
folks!

Matt Hern in the Pacific Northwest

Starting with his appearance this Sunday (March 14) at the 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, Matt Hern, author of AK’s new Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, and editor of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, takes to the road for a quick tour up the Pacific Coast. If you’re in Portland, Olympia, Seattle, or San Francisco, be sure to come on out and meet Matt!

Sunday, March 14 | Matt Hern in San Francisco

Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, 11:30AM
SF County Fair Building, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, at Golden Gate Park

Studio for Urban Projects, 7-9PM
3579 17th Street, San Francisco

Monday, March 15 | Matt Hern in Seattle, WA

Left Bank Books, 7PM
92 Pike Street, Seattle

Tuesday, March 16 | Matt Hern in Olympia, WA

Orca Books, 6PM
509 4th Avenue East, Olympia

Wednesday, March 17 | Matt Hern in Portland, OR

The Red & Black Cafe, 7PM
400 Southeast 12th Avenue, Portland

*****

Michael Schmidt in Canada

South African journalist Michael Schmidt heads to Canada next week for a week-long tour of Ontario to promote Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, organized by the wonderful folks at Common Cause. Be sure to check out one of Michael’s events if you’re in the area!

Monday, March 15 | Michael Schmidt in Waterloo

Wilfrid Laurier University, 4-6PM
School of Business and Economics, Room 2260
75 University Avenue West

(Sponsored the Communication Studies and Global Studies departments.)

March 16 | Michael Schmidt in London, details tba

March 17 | Michael Schmidt in Hamilton

McMaster University, 12-2pm
MUSC Rooms 311 and 313
1280 Main St. West
Limited seating.
Please RSVP at commoncauseontario@gmail.com

(Sponsored by the LIUNA-Mancinelli Professorship in Global Labour Issues and the School of Labour Studies.)

Sky Dragon Centre, 7-9pm
27 King William Street
Hamilton, ON
Organized by Common Cause Hamilton
commoncausehamilton@gmail.com

March 18 | Michael Schmidt in Montreal, details tba

March 19 | Michael Schmidt in Ottawa

University of Ottawa 3:00pm
Desmarais Building room 3120 (DMS)
(the newer building at ‘Laurier Station’ on the Transitway)

Exile Infoshop 7pm
256 Bank St, 2nd floor
(at the corner of Bank and Cooper)

March 20 | Michael Schmidt in Toronto

University of Toronto, 3-5PM
Bahen Centre, Room 1220
40 St. George Street

(Co-sponsored by the Pan African Solidarity Network and the Work and Labour Studies Programme, York University.)

Keep an eye out for updates at linchpin.ca, or email Common Cause at commoncauseontario@gmail.com.

PLUS! I almost forgot … the folks at Common Cause have made a promotional web video for Michael’s tour, making Black Flame the first book (I think) to have it’s own promo video. How cool is that? Stay tuned for more exciting forays into the world of 21st century technology … and enjoy the video!

For those of you who can’t make the bookfair, you can order it now (at a 25% discount!).

Wherever you are, here’s a taste of what’s in store: two brief excerpts lifted from the book’s title essay. Enjoy!

♦♦♦

The aim of anarchism is to stimulate forces that propel society in a libertarian direction.
—Sam Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 1970

Classical anarchism’s aims were no bulwark against the brutal transformations that swept the globe with the rise of actually existing communism and fascism. Historical forces drove society in a murderous direction. Anarchism did not disappear during this time. Yet its ranks were decimated. Touchstone figures were killed, including Gustav Landauer by protofascists following the Bavarian Revolution in 1919 and Erich Mühsam by Nazis in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. Others died in prison, like Ricardo Flores Magón in 1922, and some committed suicide, such as Alexander Berkman in 1936. Anarchists were increasingly isolated. Kropotkin’s death in 1921 marked the last mass gathering of anarchists—for his funeral procession, and then only with Vladimir Lenin’s permission—in Russia until 1987. Thousands of anarchists worldwide were incarcerated, exiled, or slaughtered. They were victims of repressions like the Red Scare in the United States and purges of radical opposition by numerous Communist parties. As a result, anarchism became far less vibrant, a ghost of itself. This made it difficult for people to discover the politics, further reducing the number of anarchists and anarchistic efforts. It was as if the antiauthoritarian Left skipped a generation or two.

At the same time, the world itself was transformed—but in a polar opposite way from anything that anarchists had advocated. Fascism, Bolshevism, and Maoism; the rise of the United States as a world superpower; the birth of multinational financial institutions along with the “advancement” of capitalism; the cold war with its nuclear threat: these and other emergent phenomena dramatically expanded the forms of domination that any liberatory politics needed to address. Attempts to rebuild anarchism were slow going, but never truly disappeared. In the postwar era, through the 1960s and beyond, anarchism struggled to tailor itself for the late twentieth century. It gained insight from other overlapping or like-minded movements, such as radical feminism and queer liberation, or the Autonomen in Germany and Zapatistas in Mexico. It inspired, both explicitly and in less obvious ways, everything from the playful urban politics of Amsterdam’s Provos to new forms of radical ecology like the antinuclear movement and Earth First! to the British poll tax rebellion.28 While anarchism seemed behind the curve on some issues—the collapse of Communism and the subsequent rise of unipolar neoliberalism, for instance—it continued to grow and develop.

By the close of the twentieth century, the “battle of Seattle” in 1999 was, for anarchism, just one manifestation of a whole chain of reinventions within its own tradition.29 Often seen as the birth of a “new” anarchism, the now-famous role of anarchists in Seattle’s mass mobilization against—and successful shutdown of—the World Trade Organization meetings was more a marker of something that had already occurred: a modern anarchism had developed in a direct, however hidden or circuitous, line from its “classical” past. What Seattle did do, though, was spotlight this reinvigorated anarchism, whether via images of “black bloc” anarchists throwing bricks through Starbucks windows, or explanations of how the affinity group and spokescouncil model worked in practice.30 Mostly, it gave visibility and voice to anarchism in general, helping it recapture the political imagination, in league with a host of other “movements from below” around the world.

The modernization of anarchism is also marked by what at times seems an almost dizzying array of different emphases. This increasing multiplicity is frequently a healthy development, challenging anarchism to remain germane to today’s world, and draw its reconstructive visions from potentialities within the present. Yet anarchism is not immune from the increasing fragmentation and immediacy, among other conditions, that characterize much of contemporary capitalist society. It is just as damaged by the phenomena it decries. Even as anarchists advocate a community of communities, they are, like most people today, alienated from any sense of place and hence each other. Nonetheless, there remains a profound sense of recognition between anarchists, based on a shared set of distinct values, which in turn structure their lives and projects. So let’s return to this amorphous entity called anarchism, in order to add flesh to what still may feel like a vague definition by exploring the constellation of sensibilities that describes all anarchists.

—-

A Revolutionary Stance

First and foremost, anarchism is a revolutionary political philosophy. That is, anarchism is thoroughly radical in the true sense of the word: to get at the root or origin of phenomena, and from there to make dramatic changes in the existing conditions. Anarchism aspires to fundamentally transform society, toward expansive notions of individual and social freedom. Much of the time, in practice, this means engaging in various “reforms” or improvements, but ones that at the same time attempt to explicitly articulate a revolutionary politics. This reform-pointing-to-revolution is certainly hard to navigate, much less implement. Debates within anarchism relating to strategies and tactics hinge on this question, and rightly so, since capitalism, in particular, has an astonishing knack for recuperating anything that seems to stand in its way.

Despite the difficulties, anarchists never advocate a purely reformist attitude. They try their best never to participate in reform as an end in itself, or to bring about improvements that also make the present social order look attractive. Their efforts to move from “here” to “there” intentionally highlight how current social arrangements cannot, by their own raison d’être, meet everyone’s needs and desires. Anarchists do not “rest content with the ideal of a future society without overlordship,” as anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker put it long ago; they simultaneously direct their organizing efforts at, for one, “restricting the activities of the state and blocking its influence in every department of social life wherever they see an opportunity.”31 Anarchism is not satisfied with remaining on the surface, merely tinkering to make a damaged world a little less damaging. It is a thoroughgoing critique aimed at a thoroughgoing reimagining and restructuring of society. It views this as essential if everyone is to be free, and if humanity is to harmonize itself with the nonhuman world.

As mentioned earlier, anarchism from the start focused on what appeared as the two biggest stumbling blocks to a libertarian society: capitalism and the state. This pair, sadly, are still the predominant forms of social immiseration and control. Capitalism and statecraft loom large in terms of naturalizing—and thereby being at the root of—this immiseration and control. Their separate yet often-interrelated internal logics consolidate power monopolies for a few, always at the expense of the many. This demands that each system must both continually expand and mask its dominion. To survive, they have to make it seem normal that most people are materially impoverished and disenfranchised as economic actors, and socially impoverished and disenfranchised as political actors. They have to restructure social relations in their own image—as unthinkingly assumed ways of being and acting. The world that most of humanity produces is, as a result, denied to the vast majority, and a relative handful get to make binding decisions over all of life. Anarchism is therefore staunchly anticapitalist and antistatist, which ensures that it is a revolutionary politics, since battling such primary systems necessarily means getting to the root of them. Moving beyond capitalism and states would entail nothing less than turning the world upside down, breaking up all monopolies, and reconstituting everything in common—from institutions to ethics to everyday life.

So, for example, whereas many in the global and now climate justice movements focus on corporations as key, anarchists see these entities as only one piece of capitalism, and a piece that if removed, wouldn’t destroy capitalism—bad as corporations may be. One can have capitalism without corporations. Capitalism’s essence—ensuring that society is forged around compulsory social relations along with inequities in power and material conditions—would remain in place. And given capitalism’s grow-or-die logic, small-scale capitalism would by definition unfold into a larger scale again. Or as contemporary networked and informational capitalistic structures indicate, allegedly localized capitalism can be a way to hide an increasing concentration of social control and injustice. Capitalism itself, in its totality, and because it strives toward totality, is the root problem. Anarchists, then, look to wholly undo the hegemony of capitalist economic structures and values, or the many components that mark capitalism as a system—from corporations, banks, and private property, to profit, bosses, and wage labor, to alienation and commodification.

Notes

28. A sampler of some histories of these movements includes Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Andy Cornell, “Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 1980s,” Perspectives (2009), available at http://anarchiststudies.org/node/292; Tommi Avicolli Mecca, ed., Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2009); George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006); Ziga Vodovnik, ed., YA BASTA! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising: Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004); Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007); Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Earth First! Journal, available at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org; Danny Burns, Poll Tax Rebellion (Scotland: AK Press, 1992).

29. While there are numerous books, articles, films, and news accounts about this mobilization, many written soon after Seattle 1999, the most recent one is David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit, The Battle of the Story of the “Battle of Seattle” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), timed for the tenth anniversary.

30. For more on black blocs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc; David van Deusen and Xavier Massot, eds., The Black Bloc Papers, 2nd ed. (Shawnee Mission, KS: Breaking Glass Press, 2010), available at http://www.infoshop.org/page/BlackBlocPapers. For more on affinity groups and spokescouncils, see http://www.rantcollective.net/article.php?id=30.

31. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1938; repr., Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 73.

Here, again, are the details:

15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair!
Saturday, March 13 from 10:00AM to 6:00PM
AND Sunday, March 14 from  11:00AM to 5:00 PM
SF County Fair Building @ Golden Gate Park, 9th Avenue & Lincoln Way, San Francisco
FREE
And you can get more complete info here.

But wait, that’s not all that’s going on this week! There are lots of other events being organized around the bookfair too. So whether you’re coming in from out of town and looking to be entertained, or you’re a local just wondering where all the cool kids will be hanging out, let AK Press be your guide! Here are some of the choice events that will be going on this week. Hope we’ll see you all out and about—we’ll be (a few of) the nerds in the AK Press hoodies…

Wednesday, March 10 at 7:30PM
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today
CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street (at 9th), San Francisco
FREE
Join AK author Josh MacPhee (Realizing the Impossible and a dozen other political print and poster makers as they discuss Josh’s new book on PM Press, Paper Politics, as well as the current state of political graphics making: What are we doing? Why? And is it working? Short presentations by a few artists will be followed by a large roundtable discussion with audience participation encouraged.

Thursday, March 11 at 7:00PM
The War Before: The Writings of Safiya Bukhari (Bay Area Release Event)
Women’s Building, 3453 18th Street, San Francisco
FREE
The Bay Area release event for the new book The War Before, just released by The Feminist Press! The book traces Safiya Bukhari’s lifelong commitment as an advocate for the rights of the oppressed—from middle-class student to Black Panther to political prisoner—and shows how past social justice movements have paved the way for the today’s struggles. This book release event features Safiya Bukhari’s daughter, Wonda Jones; the book’s editor, Laura Whitehorn; former Panther Kiilu Nyasha; and other guests.

Thursday, March 11 from 7:00PM–midnight
Defiant Proclamations: Radical Posters from the 1960s to the Present
CELLspace Gallery, 2050 Bryant Street, San Francisco
FREE
For decades, Bay Area walls have been pasted with bold art and pertinent messages about politics, practices, and the abuses of contemporary mainstream culture. Speaking from both inside and outside of the frameworks of organized labor and left movements, individual artists and collectives have broadcast defiant proclamations with ink and paper. This one-night-only exhibit of posters, handbills, and artifacts will feature works old and new, giving a glimpse of the broad range of opinions and styles that have papered walls across the region.

Friday, March 12 from 7:00-10:00PM
Anarchist Café
St. Martin de Porres House, 225 Potrero Avenue (between 15th & 16th), San Francisco
$5–20 suggested donation
Gather with your fellow anarchists for food, coffee, tea and performances indoors and a covered hang-out space outdoors. Dinner will be served until 9pm or until the food runs out, whichever comes first. No drugs or alcohol please! If you are interested in volunteering at the café contact Mike at mikee1051@yahoo.com; if you would like to perform, email marcus@midnightspecial.net.

Saturday, March 13 at 7:00PM
Sparks Fly: An evening in honor of Marilyn Buck
Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th Street, Oakland
$10–50 suggested donation
After 25 years, political prisoner Marilyn Buck is scheduled to get out of jail later this year. Jailed for actions in solidarity with the Black liberation and anti-war movements, Marilyn has been a voice for justice during her entire incarceration. Come out for an art auction, poetry, music, and speakers—then a dance party starting at 10PM—to help raise funds for her release.

Sunday, March 14 at 7:00PM
Visions of the Urban Future: Discussion & book signing with Matt Hern
Studio for Urban Projects, 3579 17th Street (at Dolores), San Francisco
FREE
If we want to preserve what’s still left of the natural world, we need to stop using so much of it. And cities are the best chance we have left for a sustainable future…but only if they remain vibrant, dynamic spaces that are unfolded by millions of people working together, not by master plans and planners. What will it take to make our cities truly sustainable? Join AK author Matt Hern for a discussion of his new book Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future.

Monday, March 15 at 7:00PM
An Anarchist Look at the Barcelona Squatting Movement, with Peter Gelderloos
Station 40, 3030B 16th Street, San Francisco
$3–5 suggested donation
Most of us have heard stories about (or experienced firsthand) the squatting movement in Spain. But we frequently fail to think about the effect that this network of squatted and autonomous spaces has on the social activist movement in Europe, generally, and Barcelona, specifically. How does the prevalence of squatted spaces impact the anarchist world in ways that are structurally different from the anarchist world in the United States? What do we stand to learn from each other? Author and activist Peter Gelderloos, who made headlines in 2007 when he was arrested in conjunction with a squatters’ protest in Barcelona, will explore these and other aspects of the squatting movement.

Also going on all week (March 9–16)
8 Days of Anarchy
A study group, a film screening, the BASTARD conference, and a handful of other events.
Go here for more information.

AK Authors who are speaking solo:

Margaret Killjoy (ed. Mythmakers and Lawbreakers), 3:30PM on Saturday

Void Network (ed. We Are an Image From the Future), 4PM on Saturday (in Cafe)

Cindy Milstein (Anarchism and its Aspirations), 11AM on Sunday

Matt Hern (Everywhere all the Time, ed. and  Common Ground in a Liquid City), 11:30AM on Sunday

Ward Churchill (On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Pacifism as Pathology, Since Predator Came, Life in Occupied America, Doing Time, Pacifism and Pathology, In a Pig’s Eye, contributor: Academic Repression, Red State Rebels, Monkeywrenching the New World Order) 4PM on Sunday

AK Authors who are speaking on panels:

IAS Panel w/Cindy Milstein (Anarchism and its Aspirations), 11AM on Saturday

Radical Parenting Panel w/Jessica Mills (My Mother Wears Combat Boots), 12PM on Sunday

Socially Engaged Printmaking Panel w/Josh MacPhee (Realizing the Impossible and Signs of Change), 1PM on Sunday

Contributors to AK Books who are also speaking:

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Quiet Rumours, Red State Rebels, Uses of a Whirlwind)
Andrej Grubacic (Uses of a Whirlwind)
John Zerzan (Igniting a Revolution)
Kim Stanley Robinson (Mythmakers and Lawbreakers)

And of course many other friends, authors, and contributors will be attending and tabling this weekend. See you there!

Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
Edited by Paul Avrich
Starting out with a bang, are we not?
Unabridged! The anarchists represented in this book were active between the 1880s and the 1930s and represent all schools of anarchism. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as their own selves. (More than once, people have come up to us when we are tabling and told us their granny is in it!) This work of impeccable scholarship is an invaluable resource not only for scholars of anarchism but also for those studying immigration, ethnic politics, education, and labor history.
Now just $14!

You Can’t Win
By Jack Black
A legendary book, bestseller in 1926, and hovering at the edge of our memory since; William Burroughs’ (who writes the introduction) and my landlady’s favourite book! A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still-Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail, or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived. Summer vacation reading in March!
Now just $8!

Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation
By Ward Churchill
Rational, angry, yet ultimately hopeful, Ward Churchill’s is a leading voice against the ongoing genocide perpetrated on Native American peoples. Intellectually cogent while remaining accessible to the general reader, the eighteen essays herein will challenge you to think, and then act, in the fight for justice waged since Columbus’ arrival.
Now just $11!

Reinventing Anarchy, Again
Edited by Howard Ehrlich
This book brings together the major currents of social anarchist theory in a collection of some of the most important writers from the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. The book is organized into eight sections, which are “What is Anarchism?,” “The State and Social Organization,” “Moving Toward Anarchist Society,” “Anarcha-feminism,” “Work,” “The Culture of Anarchy,” “The Liberation of Self,” and, finally, “Reinventing Anarchist Tactics.” A must have!
Now just $12.50!

Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla
By Ann Hansen
The Vancouver 5, or Squamish 5, were five Canadians convicted in the early 80s of (successfully) bombing a hydro-electric power sub-station, the Litton Systems plant in Toronto, where components for Cruise Missiles were being made, and several Red Hot Video stores, accused of selling violent pornography. Now, finally, twenty years later, Ann Hansen, who served seven years for her involvement, tells the true gripping saga of an anarchist guerilla group.
Now just $10!

A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement
By James Horrox
This is new, so obviously you should have it, but for those stragglers…
“These pages bring to life the most radical and passionate voices that shaped the second and third waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and also encounter those contemporary projects working to revive the spirit of the kibbutz as it was intended to be, despite, and because of, their predecessors’ fate.” —Uri Gordon, from the foreword
Now just $9!

The London Years
Rudolf Rocker
From the Jewish Bakers Union to the 1912 tailor’s general strike, which abolished sweatshops, The London Years chronicles the vibrant Jewish immigrant community in London, and how it organized, and fought back against poverty, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant hysteria. An incredible window into this now largely-forgotten world, and an engaging autobiography of a remarkable man. This edition includes a lengthy introduction by Colin Ward (perhaps you’re familiar with his work?), long-time anarchist agitator, propagandist, and editor.
Now just $11!

And it has been pointed out to me that I appear to be giving blog readers the finger in that picture last week. Day three of inventory, the most hairy part—I was giving Suzanne the finger, sillies!

What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq
Nicola Pratt & Nadje Al-Ali

Here we have a succinct study on the shifting roles of Iraqi women, from all sectors of society, living under the current U.S. military occupation in Iraq. This book further discredits the Dubbya administration’s initial proclamations of seeking freedom for the women of Iraq through military force and argues that the situation for these women has actually worsened due to U.S. interference.

Procesos revolucionarios en América Latina
Alberto Prieto

Adding to our growing Spanish-language section, this book comprehensively highlights various struggles, rebellions, revolutions, and insurrections that have taken place throughout the centuries in Latin America, from Túpac Amaru to Jose Martí, from Simon Bolívar to Augusto Sandino, and many many more.

La revolución negra: La rebelión de los esclavos en Haití, 1791–1804
Maria Isable Grau

More new books in Spanish! This book is part of Ocean Press’ History from Below series and looks at the history of the armed Haitian struggle against French colonization led by L’Overture—a rebellion inspired in part, ironically, by the French Revolution.

The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming A Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind
Safiya Bukhari

I am very excited about this book. It is full of mixed-documents that piece together the life of a woman who opted out of the false comforts of Black middle class assimilationism and instead decided to dedicate her life, full force, to bringing about freedom for her community by any means necessary.

Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wrethched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings
James Yaki Sayles

If this title sounds familiar to you, it is because this new book from Kersplebedeb is the expanded version of a two-part pamphlet of the same name that was initially released in 2006. Here, Sayles completes his musings on Wretched of the Earth, critiquing common misinterpretations of the text historically, while applying Fanon’s philosophy to the Black community in the United States.

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food
Alicia C. Simpson

Not only do you get 150 recipes for face stuffing considerations, but Simpson also lays out reasons as to why it’s easier, cheaper, healthier, and more delicious to be vegan. I would imagine this book makes a great gift, but I wouldn’t really know since I’m keeping it for myself.

How to Make and Use Compost: The Ultimate Guide
Nicky Scott

No matter what your living situation, you can start composting your way to a healthier, more earth-friendly diet today—with the help of this book, of course. Includes a section on compost troubleshooting!

The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science
Julie Des Jardins

Just in time for Women’s Herstory Month, this book from the good folks at Feminist Press CUNY sheds light on the seldom-heard stories of some of the women who influenced the way scientific research is conducted.

Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge
Daniel R. Wildcat

This small book makes a big impact! Here, Wildcat uses traditional Indigenous knowledge, drawing upon ancient Native American wisdom and nature-centered beliefs, to advocate a modern strategy to combat global warming.

Black Music
Amiri Baraka

Originally published in 1967, this book is comprised of interviews, reviews, essays, liner notes, etc. and features some of the most gifted jazz musicians of the time, including Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and more.

*****

The Struggle of Nootka and Tilikum

It was the first time that a trainer had ever been killed by a group of captive killer whales. There had been previous attempts, a great many actually. But the trainers involved, whether through rescue by other employees or a stroke of luck on their part, had always managed to survive. This attack, however, proved to be different and fatal. It occurred on February 21, 1991 at Sealand of the Pacific.

That day’s final performance had just ended at the Victoria, British Columbia based aquarium and the audience was pleased. They got to watch three killer whales, Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum, perform tricks, including one trick wherein a young female trainer rode on the back of one of these great sea mammals. It seemed to be wonderful fun—that is, until that particular female trainer fell into the water. As she attempted to climb out, an orca latched on to her. “The whale got her foot,” an audience member recalled to reporters, “and pulled her in.” We do not know which orca it was that started it, but all three, Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum, took their turns dunking the screaming woman underwater. “She went up and down three times,” another visitor continued. The Sealand employees “almost got her once with the hook pole, but they couldn’t because the whales were moving so fast.” One trainer tossed out a floatation ring, but the whales would not let her grab it. In fact, the closer that such devices got to the young woman, the further out the whales pulled her into the pool. It took park officials two hours to recover her drowned body.

Responding to the death, Sealand dismissed any claims that the whales had hurt the woman on purpose. “It was just a tragic accident,” the park manager lamented. “I just can’t explain it.” A few of the trainers speculated that Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum might have been playing “a game” that simply went wrong, and their coworker was mistakenly killed in the process. There was, however, precedent for a different interpretation.

In 1989, there had been two violent incidences involving Nootka. The first occurred in April. A trainer was in the middle of a routine activity, scratching the orca’s tongue, when that orca decided to turn the tables. Nootka “bit her hand and dragged her into the whale pool.” The woman had to be rescued by a fellow employee. Sealand, for its part, chose not to notify the authorities or the press. It believed that, although the trainer received lacerations and needed stitches, Nootka did not really intend to bite the person, and the situation remained in control. The trainer thought differently. Citing “unsafe conditions,” she quit her job.

Nootka struck again later that year. A tourist was taking pictures, when he accidentally dropped his camera in the water. The orca quickly noticed the object and put it into her mouth. When a trainer tried to retrieve the camera, Nootka used the opportunity to grab a hold of the man’s leg and jerk him into the pool. The trainer had to be rescued. Sealand administrators chose, once again, to deny that there was intentionality behind Nootka’s actions. No one needed to know about this incidence. Nevertheless, more trainers did resign their positions. Nootka, they believed, was purposeful and dangerous in her actions.

Elsewhere in Canada, other theme parks were having their own troubles. About a decade earlier, the Vancouver Aquarium had its hands full with Skana and Hyak. Both orcas were described by their trainer as “moody.” Working with the former was particularly precarious, as the female whale could switch from an obedient disposition to a rebellious one “in minutes.” “Skana once showed her dislike,” a Vancouver employee explained, “by dragging a trainer around the pool.” “Her teeth sank into his wetsuit but missed the leg.”

For Marineland, near picturesque Niagara Falls, it was the same but only with a different pair of whales. There was Kandu. She once yanked a trainer around the pool by the leg after the man fell off his back during a stunt. The employee was sent immediately to the hospital and a pale audience stumbled out of the stadium in disbelief. Than there was Nootka, a similarly named but all together unrelated orca to the one at Sealand. During a mid-1980s performance, she struck a trainer in the head with her pectoral fin. Aquarium administrators pronounced that it was an accident. Her trainers knew better. As one of them disclosed, Nootka often leapt out of the water in order to punch her trainers directly in the chest. She wanted to hurt people.

Interestingly, to date, there have been a total of five orcas named Nootka. Sea World had one. Marineland had another. And Sealand actually had the other three. Its first was captured in 1973 off the western Canadian coast. She died after nine months. Sealand tried again in 1975 with another female brought from the same waters. She did not fair any better and died within the year. Less than a decade later, Sealand decided to make one more attempt and flew in a young Icelandic female. She, miraculously, survived. Indeed, the average life expectancy during this era for captive orcas stood between one to four years. Aquariums often went through a whole series of whales before just one of them made it into adolescence. Today, that life expectancy has improved: rising to about ten years. Yet it is still a far cry from the thirty to sixty years that orcas can live in the ocean.

Sea World, for instance, has had fifty-one Shamus. The original was captured in 1965, after animal collector Ted Griffin harpooned the calf’s mother in Puget Sound. Betting with the odds, Sea World would only lease the animal at first. Who knows how long she would last? But, when the young orca made it through the year, the park bought her outright for $100,000. Sea World made Shamu the central figure in its operations. All marketing from this point forward was geared towards her. There would be Shamu commercials. There would be Shamu shows. There would be Shamu dolls and t-shirts. Shamu became, in the words of one director, the park’s “Mickey Mouse.” This orca did, however, have the power to disrupt these well-laid plans.

In 1971, during a publicity stunt, Shamu was being filmed with bikini-clad women riding on her back. Suddenly, she tossed the woman off and began dunking the person underwater. There were two divers in the small pool, but Shamu shrugged them off like little insects. The chaotic scene continued for a few minutes: a hysterical woman, divers tumbling in the wake, and trainers at the poolside desperately holding out poles. The individual would, eventually, be rescued. But the deed was done and the images made the local news. Shamu, apparent to all, was not near as friendly or cooperative as the amusement park would have liked us to believe. Sea World had its first major incident. At the end of the day, though, the orca’s actions were not enough to bring down the park. Operations would continue and, fifty-one Shamus later, Sea World has thrived. It has become a flagship vacation destination with three current locations: San Diego, Orlando, and San Antonio. They have hotels, restaurants, roller coasters, merchandise, and special events. They have adventure camps for grade school and high school students. They have a multitude of animal exhibitions and performances. They have extensive breeding and research programs. Shamu has made Sea World’s owners very rich.

Back at Sealand, the situation was not as rosy. The attack by Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum left the park in a public relations freefall. Administrators promised changes. New safety procedures would be initiated. Physical contact between the trainers and whales will no longer be allowed. Guardrails will be installed along the poolside to prevent slips or bites. But the public pressure would not let up. Between the daily protests at the park’s front gates, national demands that the orcas be released back to the ocean, and the city council’s entrance into the debate, Sealand’s will crumbled. In August of 1991, the park reached a startling decision. “After a lot of thought and discussion,” the director clarified, “it was decided killer whales should be phased out.” Less than one year later, Sealand shut down its entire operations. The twenty-nine year old institution had closed permanently.

The three whales, including Haida’s newborn calf, were sold to Sea World for five million dollars. The decision was made in secret, and the export permits were granted behind closed doors. The public at-large was not allowed into the conversation. Tilikum was shipped out under the cover of the night to Orlando, where he still resides. Nootka would soon follow him. She died in 1994 at the age of thirteen. Haida and her calf, Ky, went to San Antonio. Three years after the death of his mother in 2001, Ky made news of his own. That July, during a performance in front a thousand people, the orca jumped on top of his trainer and repeatedly pushed the man underwater. Sea World, afterwards, tried to pass the incident off as rough play, saying that at no time was the trainer in danger. Witnesses did not buy it. As one of them explained, “the whale was staying between the [exit] ramp and the trainer and finally the trainer jumped on top of the whale’s back and leaped over him and another trainer caught him.” At that point, “the whale turned around and slammed down on the ramp and he was pretty upset that the trainer got out of the pool.” Yesterday, the trainer did not escape.

Jason Hribal is the co-author of The Cry of Nature: an Appeal for Mercy on Behalf of Persecuted Animals. His new book, Fear of the Animal Planet, will be published this fall by AK Press / CounterPunch Books.