Midwest Action Network

From Anarkismo - By Wayne Price

Introduction to new book.

This will be the introductory chapter of my next book, which will be a compilation of essays, many from the Anarkismo.net site.

The following essays cover different topics, written at different times, but all reflect a particular viewpoint. I am not a spokesperson for anyone and make no claims to be an “orthodox anarchist,” whatever that would be. But my views are more-or-less consistent with the main tendency of certain traditional and current anarchist thought. This tendency is revolutionary, believing that eventually the working class will have to directly confront and dismantle the state; it is anti-capitalist, in the tradition of libertarian socialism, social anarchism, and anarchist-communism; it is decentralist, believing that society should be in human scale, rooted in direct democracy; it is federalist, believing that local assemblies and workplace councils should replace the state with associations and networks; it is internationalist, believing that a world-wide revolution is necessary; it is for ecological and environmental rebuilding of all industry and technology, in the tradition of social ecology and Green anarchism; as class struggle anarchism, it sees the working class as central to the revolutionary struggle, an analysis which overlaps with the libertarian and humanistic aspects of Marxism; yet it also supports every struggle against oppression by every group and on every issue, including that of women, People of Color, nations oppressed by imperialism, Gay Lesbian Bi and Transexual people, physically disabled people, those opposed to war or to ecological catastrophe; etc. In order to achieve these goals, it believes that revolutionaries should organize themselves to fight for them by word and example; this is seen as part of the self-organization of the working class and oppressed, a program called Platformism or especifisimo.

If you are not at least curious about these ideas, do not bother to read this book.

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Direct ActionOn the night of Friday April 25th, the same night Mohawk land in Tyendinaga was being attacked by armed Ontario Provincial Police, four dump trucks owned by Priori and Sons and contracted by Reids Heritage Homes were destroyed by fire causing between three and four hundred thousand dollars in damages. On the side of one truck a scrawled note read "Get The Hell Out Of Tyendinaga"

On the night of Friday April 25th, the same night Mohawk land in Tyendinaga was being attacked by armed Ontario Provincial Police, four dump trucks owned by Priori and Sons and contracted by Reids Heritage Homes were destroyed by fire causing between three and four hundred thousand dollars in damages. On the side of one truck a scrawled note read "Get The Hell Out Of Tyendinaga"

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"The president represents our whole country, whether you like it or not – if you don't vote, you can't complain..."

As radicals who struggle to express our power and our voices through direct action, not just voting, how do we respond to the reasons like this that prompt our friends and neighbors to vote, in spite of widespread disillusionment with politics? We may dismiss the 2008 presidential elections as simply another useless media spectacle, and in doing so miss a key opportunity to address how war, race and racism, global warming, and other issues play out in these national debates. On the other hand, we may even feel the temptation to capitulate to the pro-voting consensus... after all, times are desperate. But can we find a way to engage with the increased political dialogue prompted by the presidential elections, while neither ignoring them nor accepting their validity as a path to liberation?

Now, Unconventional Action announces the release of a new publication and election year outreach tool, demanding radical change outside of the empty promises of politicians!

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On the night of May 12/13, we smashed at the RBC on Broadway and Yukon. One more contribution to the increasingly “unmanageable” anti-olympics resistance, Tom Quiggin this ones for you.

For those of you who don’t get the above reference we are referring to the recent security document publish by Tom Quiggin (http://friendsofgrassynarrows.com/item.php?802F). In this document he warns that the small actions that have been multiplying over the last year amount to a potential new terrorist threat.

We believe that this small amount of revolt can become a threat to the 2010 corporate agenda. Not because of the actions in themselves but because for every one of us who picks up a match or a stone, there are many more with just as much contempt for this world of profits and prisons, who are just as eager as we are to escape from the graveyard of submission.

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The KKKanadian State & It's southern counterpart AmeriKKKa are continuing to crack down on Mohawk Warriors in the wake of the armed pigs siege on Tyendinaga. The Blockades that erupted across turtle Island, from Coastal Salish Terrority (Vancouver) to HW 6 in Six Nations & Guelph to Akwesasne to Kahnawake have been removed in good faith that the uptick in stated repression & violence against Mohawks has subsided, but KKKanada has just been bidding it's time to insured that the momentum of revolt has slowed before serving out arrest warrants for 12 more Mohawk Warriors in court today. These state fear tactics & their armed thugs of hypocrisy kidnapping members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Community is completely unexceptable.

Along with these 12 new arrest warrants, the Pigs & their colonial courts have handed down more charges against Dan Doreen & the 4 other Warriors arrested Almost 3 weeks ago in a confrontation in the town of Deseronto. This is just another face of KKKanada's continual war against Indians who refuse to be assimilated & killed. Still tonight, Shawn Brant & 2 others sit in cells, stolen from their families, prisoners of an occupying force.

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From Z Communications - By Howard Zinn and Ziga Vodovnik

"History shows that whenever people have been living under tyranny,
people would rebel against that."

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the „American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that - a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the „European Theatre". This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few. Although he spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories..." (Library Journal) His most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.

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imminent rebellion #9 is fresh off the printer! (In fact we're still high off the ink) Weighing in at a staggering 108 pages, imminent rebellion is making a come back after 3 years of hibernation as an irregular anarchist journal from deep in the South Pacific.

Included in this issue are personal commentaries from some of those arrested as part of the October 15 'terrorist' raids, an overview of the police's Operation 8, a consideration of police treatment of activists over the last few years, critiques of NGOism, activism and identity politics, and more.

Read online or buy direct from our website: http://www.rebelpress.org.nz

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From ChicoER - By LARRY MITCHELL

As an anarchist, Jim Douglass says he has no respect for the power of the presidency.

So, he continues to be surprised that he's written a book about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Douglass holds Kennedy himself in high esteem, however.

Every Thanksgiving, which is around the time of year Kennedy was killed, Douglass said he gives special thanks for the slain president. If it weren't for Kennedy, the world would have been destroyed by nuclear weapons by now, he said.

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From The International Herald Tribune

Greek police say suspected anarchist arsonists have firebombed a tax office in central Athens and caused extensive damage but no injuries.

Police say a group of 30 youths threw petrol bombs at the building and set it on fire.

The building was closed at the time of the attack late Friday.

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From Infoshop - By Brian Kvenvolden

Ants are not the deft little erectors, foragers, and soldiers people think they are. Actually they are quite inept at all of the skills people laud over them. Ants are not clever and quick, but ant colonies are.

Ant colonies solve problems that would be impossible for an individual ant to solve. Finding the most expeditious route to local food sources, the allocation of assignments to members of the colony, building structures, and defending territory from invaders are impossible tasks for an individual ant. While the individual may mishandle a situation, the colony remains responsive to its environment, making quick and effective decisions by using what is referred to as “emergent complexity.”

Emergent Complexity answers questions arising in nature, such as: How do the facile actions of individuals accumulate to form the complex behavior of groups? How do large numbers of animals make a critical decision, when many of them disagree? What empowers animals to coordinate their movements in precise, fleet and trenchant movements so as to act like a singular organism? This collective ability of each animal to contribute to the big picture without grasping what the big picture is, may have the appearance of the supernatural, until we start to unravel exactly how it is done.

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From Third Party Watch - by Wayne Allyn Root

Recently a controversy has arisen over statements Mary Ruwart made in her book Short Answers to the Tough Questions regarding the rights children possess. The most salient quote on this subject is found on page 43 in her book:

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life.

And when given an opportunity to clarify her beliefs, Ms. Ruwart recently made it clear that she continues to be opposed to all age-of-consent laws, even in the case of pre-pubescent children. In a May 1, 2008 prepared statement posted on her website she states:

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On Monday April 28th, 2008 Indigenous Warriors on Coast Salish Territory blocked a vital intersection used for commercial shipping to the United States. The action was done in solidarity with the Tyendinaga Mohawk community. Five Warriors from Tyendinaga had been arrested and attacked by the OPP days before. SWAT teams and paramilitary units were on Tyendinaga Territory surrounding dozens of other unarmed Warriors who were peacefully occupying a rock quarry claimed to be on their territory.



Solidarity actions also happened in Six Nations and Guelph. With the mounting pressure from coast to coast, and steadfast position of the Tyendinaga Mohawks the SWAT teams and paramilitary units left Tyendinaga Territory without additional attacks.

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On the night of May 7, 2008 we set fire to a Kiewitt & Sons work truck. Peter Kiewitt & Sons is currently working on expanding the Sea to Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler, the main artery for the Olympics, also paving the way for investment into land exploitation, tourism and development. This is not the first act of resistance to PK+S and hopefully not the last; in 2007 people occupied eagle ridge bluffs to prevent its destruction by the Sea to Sky highway. PK+S filed an injunction causing the arrest of camp occupants and the imprisonment of Squamish elder and warrior Harriet Nahanne who died shortly after suffering illness in prison.

PK+S constructs the spaces that house many institutions of physical as well as social control including; air force and navy operations centers, mines, dams, highways, and industrial nuclear experimentation facilities. This act, for us, was an attack against repression and those who construct its systems.

Anonymous

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John Zerzan, anti-civ anarchist writer and theorist will be giving 3 talks in Montreal on May 15, 16 and 18. In Montreal, there has been for several years a number of green anarchists of various persuasions, and a number of anarcho-communists or situationist and marxist inspired leftists that would rather that the green anarchists disappear.

With the appearance of the north eastern federation of anarcho-communists, an organisationalist, platformist group, the gulf between the non anarcho-communists and them tended to widen. Montreal's green-anarchists were found in groups such as Liberterre, and in the Mauvaise Herbe, which is still active as a green-anarchist group.

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From Telegraph UK - By Richard Dorment

Banksy - arncha sick of him? The first few times I saw graffiti by the mystery man from Bristol, I was struck by his bitter wit and sure sense of design and scale. But unlike, say, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy's art didn't make the transition from public space to art gallery easily.

A one-line visual joke that made you smile when you saw it stencilled on to the 20ft-high wall of some grubby parking lot in East London wasn't nearly as funny transferred to a canvas hanging in a West End art gallery. That's because any graffiti artist worth his salt keeps both the image and the message simple enough to be grasped from the top of a moving bus.

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From Anarkismo

Common Cause Hamilton participated by organizing several events. As part of the week long series of discussion groups and film screenings, we organized a showing of the documentary, Grass Through Concrete, which chronicles the hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful struggle to stop the building of a major highway through Hamilton's urban forest, the Red Hill Valley.

We also organized an anarchist discussion group called "Love, Rage, & Revolution; Exploring Anarchism in the City." Turnout was small for both events though we did connect with several people who we hadn't met before. The main event was the Street Festival held on May 3.

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From the AP

ATHENS, Greece: Youths hurled petrol bombs at the offices of Greece's main opposition Socialist Party, damaging the entrance of the building in central Athens, police said early Saturday.

No one was hurt in the attack that occurred shortly before midnight Friday.

Police said about 30 youths threw at least 10 petrol bombs at the offices of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement.

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From The Spectator

Victoria Marie lights a cigarette on the porch of the E. Pender St. Catholic Worker house in Vancouver, British Columbia. Like Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, she enjoys a smoke on occasion. Her roommate, Sarah Bjorknas, just laughs. As roommates go, these two are as unlikely as they come. Marie is a Franciscan nun, Bjorknas is a Christian anarchist and a library worker. One committed to the Catholic faith, the other dedicated to rejecting structures of power.

The Catholic Worker movement was founded by Day and Peter Maurin on the belief that every person possesses god-given dignity. According to the organization’s Web site, catholicworker.org, they are “committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and the Works of Mercy as a way of life.” The groups are committed to providing an environment where “the homeless, the hungry, and the forsaken would always be welcome.”

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Anarchism’s anti-nationalist & transnational imperative

Magazine of the Anarchist Federation
Summer 2008 - Issue 70

We present issue 70 of Organise! with an anti-fascist theme. This includes an analysis of the problem faced by anarchists aiming to fight fascism without falling into the trap of alliance with broad-based leftist and ‘democratic’ oppositions, followed by one on Antifa, the anarchist alternative to such alliances. Our approach to anti-fascism is important, not least because of the need to prevent the BNP’s plan to hold their Red, White and Blue festival in Nottinghamshire again this summer, in spite of welcome splits locally and nationally. To give an international perspective on the problem, we also include an article about the rise of ultranationalism in Bulgaria written by a Bulgarian member of AF. As a counterpoint to these worrying developments, four decades having passed since the heady days of rebellion in 1968 (see article on Paris '68 in this issue), the International of Anarchist Federations can only be relieved to be celebrating it’s own 40th year anniversary with news of meaningful dialogue between contemporary Bulgarian anarchists and Turkish autonomous groups.

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On May 1st, at the stroke of midnight, ATMs across Santa Cruz were put out of their misery. This action is in solidarity with those arrested on May Day in Olympia. They are accused of rioting and throwing rocks through the windows of Bank of America and US Bank. Some of the banks targeted in Santa Cruz include Bank of America and Wells Fargo. While all banks fund destructive, repressive, industrial enterprises, these two are particularly heinous.

Wells Fargo invests in the GEO Group, which owns the ICE Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. The Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, Detention Center is a private immigration prison facility located on the tide flats of Tacoma, Washington. The detention center opened in 2004 under a contract with The US Department of Homeland Security, Though owners have changed over time, the facility is now owned by the GEO Group which operates prison facilities in Australia, The UK, South Africa, the US and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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