Most Recent Additions
Lee Elbinger
Hitch-hiking in Laos
Santiniketan, India
Special to the Fifth Estate
It’s weird.
Future historians, in analyzing the causes of the Laotian War (or World War II as the case may be) will be stumped by a curious footnote which will cause them to take off (or put on) their spectacles, shake their heads slowly, and say, “it’s weird.” They will be amazed, of course, at the presence of “hippies” in Laps and the part they play politically in the games of intrigue that are so characteristic of Laotian government.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Dave Valler
Letter from Jail
I’ve been in jail for so long now that I’ve lost count of the days, But such is the fate of the man who doesn’t have the money for bail ($10,000 or $1,000 for a bondsman).
I’ve found that there’s two types of justice in our illustrious nation: one for the rich, and one for the poor.
But if life in a “democracy” hands you a lemon, you don’t bitch. You find that there’s only steel bars to listen to you. So you do what any man who wants to make the world a better place to live would do. You squeeze the lemon and start a lemonade stand.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Art Wohl
Mind and Movement
The Oriental Way
Editors’ Note: Art Wohl studied exercises in T’ai Chi Ch’uan with various Chinese practitioners in New York. He has taught body sensitivity and coordination to athletes, dancers, actors, singers, and the physically and mentally disabled.
He will lead a workshop in body awareness and control on December 3, from 2 to 4–30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Church, Woodward at King. The cost will be $2 for the session which will be an intensive series of guided experiences bringing about a progressively deepening state of concentration and awareness of the body’s spontaneous tendencies to release tensions and rigidities, center and realign itself, establish a state of dynamic equilibrium and to enhance its use as a vehicle for self expression.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Liberation News Service
Rudd Faces Army
NEW YORK (LNS)—Mark Rudd has asked his local draft board to give him an occupational deferment on the grounds that he is a “revolutionary” working for SDS and engaged in fighting against “a small number of people who are bleeding and destroying our country.”
Rudd, a former chairman of SDS at Columbia and an active participant in last spring’s rebellion, wrote to his draft board in Irvington, N.J., on Nov, 14: “My occupation, revolutionary, is vital to the national interest of the United States.” Rudd was re-classified 1-A by his draft board in Irvington recently, after the Columbia registrar’s office notified the board that Rudd had been suspended from the college. The chairman of the draft board, Clifford Day, told the Columbia Spectator that the decision was not based on political considerations.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Hamish Sinclair
The Meaning of Conspiracy Laws
Movement people should be familiar with the “conspiracy trial,” Its a favorite government tool to stop a radical movement it can no longer absorb or put to good use. It parallels the “Committee Hearing” but doesn’t get the same publicity.
Conspiracy trials are easy for the government to initiate. They usually deal with planning to break a law, a useful device since it is bound to catch the leaders who are the planners. Leaders have to talk to their constituents in court if the plan is to break the law.
Mar 29, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Accused Bombers Face Weird Court
The pretrial examination of 14 street people for dynamite conspiracy has been marked by the incredible legal buffoonery of Judge Thomas Poindexter. the assault of a defendant by a bailiff. and the testimony of a freek turned stool pigeon.
The fourteen are charged with con-spring to dynamite several police stations, a draft board, the CIA office in Ann Arbor and several other sites in the Detroit area.
Mar 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Editors’ Notes
Reading the Fifth Estate last issue was sort of a magical mystery tour with none of the teasers on the front page corresponding to the proper pages and a number of other horrors.
This was caused by last minute surgery when our printer decided he would be unable to print a two-page spread photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing nude because he felt it would hurt his other business.
Mar 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
HELL NO!
DETROIT Nov. 14—In a joyous celebration at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, eight men returned their draft cards to the Selective Slavery System, including the pastor of the church.
In breaking their ties with the draft the men stated, “Young men are being forced to choose between being free to celebrate their existence and being forced to engage in acts of destruction. We choose freedom, life, and the joy involved in being true to ourselves.”
Mar 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
Fifth Estate
A Newspaper of Detroit
EDITORS
Harvey Ovshinsky
Peter Werbe
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Cathy West
CIRCULATION
Tormnye Wiese
NEWS EDITOR
Alan Gotkin
MUSIC EDITOR
John Sinclair
PHOTO EDITOR
Mike Tyre
ART DIRECTION
Blalren
ADVERTISING
Gunnar Lewis
CALENDAR
Resa Jannett
IDEOLOGUE
Mar 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Police Take Lumps
Is Detroit Police Commissioner Johannes Spreen serious about trying to alter the brutal, racist and corrupt nature of the force he commands?
Some think he is.
He ordered the suspension on Nov. 13 of nine policemen in the unprovoked beating of several black teen-agers after a dance given by the Detroit Pig Officers Association (DPOA) at the Veterans Memorial Building. The youth were attending a church dance.
Mar 28, 2021 Read the whole text...
Active Transformation
Active Transformation
Who we are
Centerfold insert
Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000
A Direct Action Anarchist Newspaper
Active Transformation is a direct action anarchist newspaper that has been publishing in whole and in part since 1993. Two separate collectives make up the newspaper collective, one in Detroit and the other in Lansing. We mainly focus on the institutions and social relationships that oppress us in our daily lives. From the prison industrial complex, to homophobia to capitalism — we try and cover it all. Our struggle for freedom is as diverse as our lives!
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarchist Prisoners’ Legal Action Network Formed
The Anarchist Prisoners’ Legal Action Network (APLAN) is a prisoner-guided initiative formed to provide legal aid and outside support for imprisoned anarchists and their allies. Anarchists in prison experience the prison-industrial complex first-hand and are thus subject to a variety of unusual punishments and restrictions.
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
Active Transformation
From L.A. with Love
Centerfold insert
Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000
I recently traveled to Los Angeles for the North American Anarchist Conference (NAAC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC). The NAAC was held August 11th through the 13th, while the DNC was the 14th through the 17th. Both events had an extremely strong anarchist presence. In my eyes, the NAAC was a major success. I was one of the first people to arrive, and I was energized by the numbers of people constantly outside the front doors waiting to sign in. All in all, over 500 people attended, but they were not all there at once. Many people were only at the conference for a day or so, or spent a lot of time at the events at the Direct Action Network’s convergence center, so it seemed like it was smaller because there were only 100 to 200 people at the conference at any given time.
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters to the Fifth Estate
Fifth Estate Letters Policy
We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.
Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
Anarchists
Statement on GOP and Democratic Conventions
Centerfold insert
Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000
“We make war upon the State as the chief invader of person and property, as the cause of substantially all the crime and misery that exist, as itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals faster than it punishes them. It exists to create and sustain the privileges which produce economic and social chaos. It is the sole support of the monopolies which concentrate wealth and learning in the hands of a few and disperse poverty and ignorance among the masses to the increase of which inequality the increase of crime is directly proportional. It protects a minority in plundering the majority by methods too subtle to be understood by the victims, and then punishes such unruly members of the majority as an attempt to plunder others by means too simple and straightforward to be recognized by the State as legitimate, crowning its outrages by deluding scholars and philosophers...into pleading, as an excuse for its infamous existence, the necessity of repressing crime which it steadily creates.”—Benjamin R. Tucker, 1882
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
xoxoxo from philly
Wish You were Here
Centerfold insert
Special Fifth Estate Convention Edition 2000
What follows is a first hand account of a participant in the actions in Philly against the Republican National Convention....
Monday’s event was a march against financial inequality. Marchers were gathered at the base of the city hall building in the center of downtown. There were several helicopters overhead and it was clear that there were more police around than a typical Monday afternoon, but they were not excessively flaunting their numbers (yet).
Mar 27, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate Books
Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before visiting.
HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL
1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;
2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.13 U.S. or $2.00 foreign (minimum for 4th class book rate postage);
Mar 26, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
News & Reviews
The several thousand unapproved, pirate radio stations operating in the U.S. won a Pyrrhic victory in July when the Federal Communication Commission agreed to license hundreds of the low power broadcasting operations, many which feature anarchist, punk, black, and community programming.
The catch is that the FCC will demand that licensed frequencies broadcast a certain number of hours a week. Also, about half of the applications for licensing have come from right-wing, fundamentalist churches.
Mar 26, 2021 Read the whole text...
Sunfrog (Andy “Sunfrog” Smith)
You Might as Well Dance
The Return of the Son of the Layabouts
With a name like the Layabouts, it should come as no surprise that Detroit’s Cass Corridor premier anarchist dance band has taken 15 years to produce a follow-up recording to 1985’s blazing combination of infectious beats and insurrectionary lyrics, No Masters.
Mar 25, 2021 Read the whole text...
Sunfrog (Andy “Sunfrog” Smith)
Communes in the 21st Century
“Do you all sleep in the same room?”
a review of
Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living, Third Edition, Jillian Downey and Elph Morgan, eds., 2000, $30 from the Fellowship for Intentional Community, www.ic.org, or RR 1, Box 156-D, Rutledge, MO 63563
“We tried living communally in the Sixties and it didn’t work.” “I didn’t know communes still existed, except in California.” “Do you all sleep in the same room?”
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Andy Sunfrog (Andy “Sunfrog” Smith)
Group Sex
Communal Ethics of Eroticism, Free Love and the Extended Family
Fifth Estate Note: Since his 1991 review/essay “Operation Gender Blur” [FE #336, Spring, 1991] Sunfrog has written about radical sexuality for the Fifth Estate. Both 1992’s “Pornography and Pleasure: Beyond Capital, Beyond Patriarchy” [FE #340, Autumn 1992] and 1993’s “Queer Anarchy: Anarcha-Faggots Demand to be De-Manned, a (de)Manifesto” [FE #342, Summer 1993] garnered extensive reactions from our readers, from thankful praise to condemnatory criticism. With “Group Sex,” we welcome the return of Sunfrog’s thoughtful, passionate, and uncompromising erotic politics to our pages.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Judi Bari bombing case to go to trial
Three hundred and fifty supporters of two Earth First! forest defense activists rallied outside the San Francisco FBI field office May 24 on the tenth anniversary of the day when a shrapnel-stuffed pipe bomb exploded in a car driven by Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, crippling her.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Kerry Mogg
Reaction to the Calgary Oil Congress Protests
They evacuated the Cows
Environmental activists, anarchists, and other concerned individuals began organizing against the June 2000 meeting of the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, six months in advance of the event.
The Congress, founded in 1933, is composed of such oil producing nations as the U.S., Canada, Croatia, Indonesia Kuwait Nigeria and Libya. Its focus is industry issues, such as down-playing global warming.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Saying No to Nader
In the year since the anti-capitalist/anti-corporate demonstrations in Seattle, intense actions have occurred in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, London, Prague, and dozens of other cities across this country and the world.
They have functioned as models of resistance to global capitalism’s exploitation of labor, environmental degradation, and state repression Hence, it is disturbing to see some activists now advocating participation in the domesticated arena of electoral politics.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Allan Antliff
Mark Antliff
Sexual Anarchy
The Monument to Oscar Wilde
The Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris contains many tombs honoring artists and rebels, but the most striking of them all is the monument to the gay English playwright and anarchist Oscar Wilde. [1]
The story of Wilde’s trial for homosexuality and subsequent imprisonment in England is well-known. After his release from jail in 1897, he fled to the continent and settled in Paris. He died there in exile in 1900 and was quietly buried in Pere Lachaise.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Sunfrog (Andy “Sunfrog” Smith)
Support Your Local Utopia
Vachel Lindsay’s Golden Book
a review of
The Golden Book of Springfield, Vachel Lindsay, 1920, Re-Introduction by Ron Sakolsky, 1999, Charles H. Kerr Publishers, Chicago
Nearly three decades after moving to central Illinois to share radical ideas with students at Sangamon State college, activist-writer-anarchist-musicologist-deejay-and-dreamer Ron Sakolsky is planting the seeds of his exodus from the job that brought him there, at the now sanitized, corporatized, and renamed University of Illinois at Springfield.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Ron Sakolsky
The Ludic Path to Utopia
a review of
Utopian Prospects, Communal Projects: Visionary Experiments in Literature and Everyday Life, Andy Sunfrog Smith, self-published, 2000, 65 pages, $12. Available from the author, post paid, at 1467 Pumpkin Hollow Rd. Liberty, TN 37095
As the late Middle Western novelist, Meridel Le Sueur, once advised her younger anarchist biographer Neala Schleuning in relation to a question about her philosophy, “That’s the problem with you intellectuals. You constantly want to analyze. Life’s not like that. I’m not like that. Writing isn’t like that. Not real writing. You have to be in a wholly different place. Get rid of those dead, lifeless forms! How do they teach you to write? Beginning, middle, end? That’s not life. And that’s not writing.” As the illusions of objective scholarly research fell away at Merida’s prodding, Schleuning’s approach was liberated from the weight of academic posturing, and the insightful nature of her understanding of the subject of her thesis was heightened accordingly.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Max Cafard
The Tao of Capitalism
Or, Going with the (Cash) Flow
Lao Tzu was the mythic “Old Sage” of ancient China. We’re not sure whether he actually existed, but we do know that he founded Taoist philosophy. His legendary Tao te Ching, the “Classic of the Way and its Power,” is a subtle treatise that radically challenges our views of everything—including ourselves, nature and the world around us. I like to call it “The Anarchist Prince,” for just as Machiavelli’s The Prince is a manual for rulers who wish to learn to rule, Lao Tzu’s classic is written for rulers who want to learn how not to rule.
Mar 22, 2021 Read the whole text...
Mosa Charlo
Anxiety Disorders, Mental Hospitals & Other Modern Evils
An inside look
This is dedicated to all those who are suffering.
In the Summer of 1998, following a fed-up trip to city life, I resolved to live without electricity or running water in a trailer in Montana in complete social isolation. How long it would last I hadn’t considered. Turns out it was a year before the hermitism (literally not speaking to a soul for six months, broken only by a passerby requesting directions, and thereafter resumed), and tedium took its toll.
Mar 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Detroit Seen
Welcome to the Fall/Winter 2000 Fifth Estate which follows our Spring 2000 edition. This issue marks the 35th anniversary of this paper, now the longest running English language anarchist publication in U.S. history.
It’s quite a legacy, one we continue to build on, but only with your ongoing support. Thanks to everyone who subscribed, renewed, sent donations (especially our Sustainers), bought books, came by, wrote articles and letters, sent graphics and photos, and a hundred other things that make issues happen.
Mar 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Tales from the Planet
Quick! Call the Anarchist Anti-Defamation League (AADL). It’s bad enough when every corporate media outlet uses anarchism as a synonym for chaos, but now an English company has gone even further.
Superdrug PLC is marketing a commercial bath product line using the brand name “Anarchy,” complete with a circle A over the first letter, which includes a body shower gel they call “Havoc.” “Wreak Havoc,” the plastic container urges; “Get Refreshed.”
Mar 20, 2021 Read the whole text...
Octavio Alberola
Farewell Comrade
David Graeber’s Practical Anarchism
Perpignan, 18 September 2020
The untimely death of anthropologist and activist David Graeber has triggered a wave of emotion in social networks and, in the world press, generated headlines recognizing the intellectual worth of his wide-ranging work and militant activism.
Which is why, in the posthumous tributes, there have been frequent references—more or less well-meaning—to his anarchist activism and his conception of anarchism. Although it needs to be highlighted that he did not enjoy being classified as an “anarchist anthropologist” because, in his view, anarchism is a practice rather than an identity: “anarchism is a matter of doing, not of being.”
Mar 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Julie Herrada
Judaism and Anarchism Conference in Venice
Anarchists from all over Europe and the Americas, as well as several from Israel, attended an International Study Conference on Anarchism and Judaism, held in Venice, Italy, May 5–7.
It was organized by Milan’s Centro Studi Libertari Archivio G. Pinelli and the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme in Lausanne, in collaboration with the Venice City Council and held on the University of Venice campus.
Mar 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
The Fifth Estate is a cooperative, nonprofit project, publishing since 1965. The people who produce it are a group of friends who do so neither to secure wages nor as an investment in the newspaper industry, but to encourage resistance to an unjust and destructive society.
The Fifth Estate (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA;
Mar 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Mumia Appeal at Critical Phase
There is so much going on in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death row ex-Black Panther framed by a conspiracy of cops, prosecutors, judges, and politicians, that it would take pages to report it all.
We hope supporters of Mumia will avail themselves of the great amount of information necessary for an understanding of the case and the forces aligned against him who are intent on strapping an innocent man to the execution gurney.
Mar 19, 2021 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Worldwide Anarchy
Demonstrations Across the World Oppose Globalized Capitalism
FE note: A quarterly publication cannot hope to keep up with fast breaking events such as the actions that have taken place against capitalist rule over the last year. However, we think it is urgent to report these stories to encourage more such activity, and also, if even belatedly, to counteract the lies posing in the corporate media as news.
Mar 18, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate Books
Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate Newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before coming by.
HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL
1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;
2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.13 U.S. or $1.60 foreign (minimum for 4th class book rate postage);
Mar 16, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Clark
Kropotkin’s Ideas
Mutual aid, evolution and revolution, conflict resolution, social individuality, and the metaphysics of nature
a review of
Graham Purchase, Evolution & Revolution: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Peter Kropotkin (Petersham, Australia: Jura Books, 1996)
Graham Purchase’s recent book, Evolution & Revolution, is a concise and generally useful assessment of Kropotkin’s-life and work from a social anarchist perspective. In addition to presenting a brief biography of the famous anarchist, Purchase analyses Kropotkin’s ideas on such topics as mutual aid, evolution and revolution, conflict resolution, social individuality, and the “metaphysics of nature.”
Mar 16, 2021 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters to the Fifth Estate
Fifth Estate Letters Policy
We welcome letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in your area. We don’t guarantee to print everything received, but all letters are read by our staff and considered for publication.
Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing longer responses, please contact us.
Mar 16, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
News & Reviews
The 15 minutes of fame for Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber, are not up after all. He’s been in the news several times recently. Kaczynski is releasing an autobiographical account of his life, entitled Truth Versus Lie, printed by Context Media. This new, small, New York City publisher picked up the manuscript after hearing that Simon and Schuster rejected it.
Mar 16, 2021 Read the whole text...
John Filiss
Against the Totality
John Zerzan’s Against Civilization
a review of
Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections, edited by John Zerzan. Uncivilized Books, Eugene, Ore., 1999, 214 pp., $10 (available from FE Books)
Against Civilization is an essay collection taking the radical perspective that the society we toil ceaselessly to maintain and reform may not be worth sustaining.
Mar 15, 2021 Read the whole text...
Alice Detroit
Technology: There’s the Rub
Ken Knabb’s Public Secrets
a review of
Public Secrets, Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets, P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley, California 94701, 408 pp., $15 (available from FE Books)
Do radicals get more pleasure from life?
For most of us around the Fifth Estate, the answer is yes. We might not all agree on why, but our detachment from many of this society’s ideological bonds lets us laugh at, ridicule, and debunk antics of popes and politicians. We distinguish ourselves from obedient zeks and this gives us satisfaction.
Mar 15, 2021 Read the whole text...
Julie Herrada
Joseph Labadie and the Labor Movement
Life of a Detroit Anarchist
a review of
All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement, Carlotta R. Anderson, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1998, 324 pp., $34.95
As a native Detroiter, I was raised with a belief in the strength of the labor movement, the power of the unions, and the importance of the Almighty Henry Ford to the economic life of Detroit.
Mar 14, 2021 Read the whole text...
Allan Antliff
Toronto’s Anarchist Free School
Theory into Action
During last August’s Active Resistance gathering (see FE #352, Winter 1999) a discussion group on Community Organizing came up with a proposal to found a free school in Toronto.
I and others were approached to participate in the effort, and before long a core group of about eight people was meeting twice a week to hammer out the logistics. From the start we envisaged the school serving as a center for anarchist organizing and activism.
Mar 14, 2021 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Undeterred by jail
Bay Area pie throwers strike again
San Francisco—When San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown testified against the three homelessness activists who threw pies at him last November, he repeatedly urged the court to make an example of the defendants. (See FE #352, Winter 1999.)
The trial ended in a split verdict for members of the Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB), Rahula Janowski, Justin Gross, and Gerry Livernois. Jurors deliberated for over nine hours, finally acquitting the defendants of the heavier charge of assaulting a public official, while convicting them of simple battery.
Mar 10, 2021 Read the whole text...
Montezuma
The Stronghold and the Shrine
Does the sudden appearance of the mass, authoritarian state and fortified cities in human history after millennia of small band and tribal life suggest extraterrestrial intervention?
I contend the state is extraterrestrial (E.T.) in origin and that the city emanated from the state. The city is, therefore, also E.T. in origin. I will also demonstrate that the abolition of slavery necessitates the eradication of both. In the 1960s, author Erich Von Daniken asserted in his controversial Chariots of the Gods? that E.T.s had mated with monkeys and apes via artificial insemination and gene-splicing, producing early hominids. The repeating of the E.T. mating, gene-splicing process with hominids eventually produced Neanderthals and finally Homo Sapiens, according to Von Daniken.
Mar 9, 2021 Read the whole text...
Heather Bowlan
More and Better Trouble
A review of
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel. Nightboat Books 2020
We Want It All is a big, unwieldy, overflowing book—in this particular moment, there is a need for excess to respond to excess; to the smug American Horror Story of overblown, overglossed oppression and hatred. As We Want It All’s editors, Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, state, “Our aim in the present collection is therefore both to register and to amplify this tendency” to write against these excesses of power. They identify eight separate “overlapping strategies and concerns” in this anthology, acknowledging they are far from comprehensive, among them explorations of the ecological and the historical, collaborative exchanges and serial poems, satire and lyricism.
Mar 8, 2021 Read the whole text...
Marissa Holmes
The Political Vision of David Graeber
Throughout his life, David Graeber remained an eternal optimist who refused to accept the world as it is, and saw only what it could be. He envisioned international, directly democratic, and egalitarian politics. To achieve this required practice.
In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Graeber made an hypothesis: majoritarian democracy was in its origins essentially a military institution, a coercive political process in which the minority was compelled by force to do as the majority wanted. Often the “majority,” as in the case of Ancient Athens, was comprised only of white property-owning men. A real democracy could be found in non-Western examples, where people made decisions based on consent rather than coercion. He wrote, “If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose.” Thus, in communities where the mechanism of coercion, most commonly the state, was absent, there was no reason to engage in a majoritarian process. Instead, he claimed, they operated by not only a formal consensus decision-making process, but a culture of consensus.
Mar 8, 2021 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Chris Clark
A Speed bump in the road?
“We are always facing Armageddon”
The following interview with Chris Clark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, publication of Earth Island Institute, was taped the week of January 18. I chose Clark to interview since he and his organization seem sensible in their theoretical and activist approach to defense of the environment. This may appear as an endorsement to some and a condemnation to others.
Mar 6, 2021 Read the whole text...
Kyle Holbrock
The Year 2000 for Revolutionaries
Destroy Market Capitalism In Six Easy Steps (or Catastrophe?)
The present society produces an ever-increasing series of disasters, from stock market crashes to mass starvation. Most of this chaos winds up hurting the most dispossessed while the capitalists laugh all the way to the bank. Knowing this, as a revolutionary and professional programmer, I want to outline why the Man will get hit worse than he is anticipating by the particular crisis known as the Year 2000 or Y2K problem.
Mar 6, 2021 Read the whole text...