An Open Letter to Other White Working People

To other white skinned working Americans:

As the election season of 2008 approaches, politics and the ramifications of those elections are topics that are on everyone's minds. I know that other white-skinned working class people feel the same way I do: 2008 could make it or break it for us. However, most people reading this may initially disagree with what I mean by that statement. Hopefully by the end of this letter, I can change some minds.

I start with the assumption that white skinned working class people are tired of living in poverty, tired of living paycheck to paycheck, tired of seeing the products of their hard efforts evaporate before their very eyes. The times are tough for many of us, where we don't know how we're going to survive. Politician after politician makes empty promises, and seemingly there's no relief for us, as white skinned working Americans. So we start to look around at who to blame, and it's easy enough... we blame black people, brown people... "illegals". It's simple enough. We're competing with these people for jobs and resources, in some cases it seems like a logical enough conclusion to come to.

Historically, we've always been at odds with immigrants and non-white peoples. We have seen our allegiance become an allegiance to whiteness, to being white. We can relate to other white people, no matter how poor or rich. They're white like us, and that's something we can identify with, come to terms with. So of course, our natural enemies become non-white peoples.

The only problem with this idea is that we've had it wrong for centuries. We've been kept blind to the true nature of what is afoot here, as to what's really going on. Look around us. Who fills the trailer parks with us? Who works in the factories or fast food restaurants with us? Who is beside us working in the fields, picking produce that we'll never really be able to afford? Is it rich people, especially rich white people? Hell no, it isn't. It's brown people, black people, yellow people. It's people who have different shades of skin than us. They are the people that are in similar situations to us, living paycheck to paycheck, suffering like we do. So why then would we view them as our enemy?

Allegiances, traditionally, are made amongst people who have common interests. In an historical sense, white skinned working people have overwhelmingly believed that our interests are based on skin color. We have to work for the betterment of the race, for our culture, for our identity. The truth, however, could never be further away. Whose interests do these beliefs really serve? White workers? In some sense, the answer may be "yes". Working for the advancement of the white race at the cost of other races does buy us relative privileges and even some luxuries. In the end, however, we're still poor, we're still being used to make other people money. And those people aren't non-white working people.

The true interests of white skinned workers lie with other workers, no matter what their race. This idea is simple enough, but will take much time to understand and really internalize. Other workers, of all races, are exploited. We are exploited. We work to barely meet our needs, while bosses and the people in charge profit from that labor. We are born and we die in squalor or relative poverty while the rich and the politicians live in the lap of luxury. Who are these rich people? Who are these politicians? The truth is that 95% of them are white. They are 95% male. They are 95% English speaking. They are 95% Christian (or at least pretend to be so). Tonight when we go to bed tonight in our overcrowded apartments, our small houses, or our tiny trailers, they are the ones who will go to bed in luxury, in comfort, with no worries at all.

The blunt reality is that for the last five hundred years on this continent, white working class people have been used by mostly white rich people to colonize for, kill for, work for, and then better the living standards of those same white rich people, all the while sacrificing our own needs, wants, aspirations, and even lives. It really is as simple as that. No one denies the history of what has happened at working people's expenses. Wars, poverty, homelessness, wage slavery... these are all ills created by someone, and perpetuated by us... the same workers who suffer these ills.

For some five centuries we've been used by the rich among our own race to promote their agenda and suffered because of it. Yet, somehow, we've still been convinced that our allegiance is to our race, to these same rich whites that would just as soon see us die as they would be to help us as racial allies. Let's get real, how often do these white rich racialists actually just give handouts to us poor white skinned folk? When does this actually happen? Do you really think they care at all about our well being? Where's the allegiance from them, the people that put us in the worst situations we face and also spew out the racialist, pro-white speeches at rallies and gun shows?

The heart of the matter is that for these five centuries, we've been too busy fighting the people who should naturally be our allies against these injustices. The rich whites have used our skin color against us, have used our human nature of fearing living beings different than us against us... they've used us against us. They've blinded us with these racialist ideas of "white supremacy" and "white pride" and "white nationalism" into fighting other working people of other races, while they sit on the sideline and laugh.

When you walk into your workplace tomorrow, where are the majority of the blacks? Or brown skinned people? Or women? Are they in positions of power over us? Sure, some might be. But where are the majority of those that are at our workplace? That's right: side by side with us, experiencing the same drudgery and wage slavery as us. So, logic might tell us that they should also be side by side with us in our fight for liberty and an end to oppression. Wouldn't that make more sense than working side by side with the same people that rob our paychecks and swindle us out of the products of our labor?

For far too long, the ignorant stooges of the rich within our race have thrown up a red flag to these ideas... have spewed words like "pinko" and "communist" and "terrorist" at white folks that may have finally started to awaken to the truth of what's really happening here. I'm not a communist. I hate Stalin. I hate Lenin. I hate Mao. I also hate Bush. I also hate Clinton. I also hate Carter. I also hate Paul. These people, all of them, are the ruling elites that I despise... who live in relative luxury while the rest of us work away our very existence to barely eat.

White skinned working people, the time is now to form the real alliances that will actually better our lives. It's time to see who our real allies must be.

For starters, we have to reject the ridiculous notion that mostly brown skinned immigrants from Mexico or other countries are our enemy, that they are somehow stealing our jobs, that they somehow really threaten us. Let's get real. Who's really stealing our jobs? Well, let's see, even a generous estimate of the number of illegal immigrants working in the U.S. is 6 million (notice I said working, not living). This stands in stark contrast to the conservative estimate that nearly 50 million jobs will have been lost to outsourcing by 2015 since NAFTA came into affect in 1994. Well, let's ask ourselves, who's really stealing our jobs? Poor Mexicans? Or Rich White CEOs?

We're fed ridiculous ideas of the "invading" brown hordes, and the rich whites that make up the upper echelons of organizations like the Minutemen and other similar groups salivate over our reactions. If we're busy fighting the Mexicans at the border, and busy trying to round up all the "illegals" then we're too busy to fight that real enemy, that one that keeps eluding us, those rich whites I keep talking about. Most of us that keep falling for these lines initially might mean well. Heck, we only want to defend our families and our communities... but in reality, we're weakening them even more, by fighting our real potential allies and diverting our attention from the real enemy, the "enemy within" (our own race).

And why are all these brown skinned immigrants coming here in the first place? Why is there this sudden rush in the last thirteen years to get into this country? 80% of all illegal immigrants have entered since 1994. Why is that? What happened in 1994 that affected working people in Mexico just as it affected us? The passage of NAFTA, a free trade program that benefits nobody but the rich people on both sides of the border! If the rich people on both sides of the border are united, despite what race they are, why are we still allowed to be divided and conquered?

The evolution of the creation of the identity of whiteness on this continent tells us everything we need to know about the situation we now find ourselves in. I think that David Gilbert explains this the best, in his essay "Looking at the Working Class Historically":

Up until the 1680’s little distinction was made in the status of Blacks and English and other Europeans held in involuntary servitude. Contrary to common belief, the status of Blacks in the first seventy years of the Virginia colony was not that of racial, lifelong, hereditary slavery, and the majority of the whites who came were not "free”. Black and white servants intermarried, escaped together, and rebelled together.

There were a series of servile rebellions that threatened the plantation system in the period preceding the transition to racially designated chattel slavery and white supremacy. In 1661 Black and Irish servants joined in an insurrectionary plot in Bermuda. In 1663, in Virginia, there was an insurrection for the common freedom of Blacks, whites and Indian servants. In the next 20 years, there were no fewer than ten popular and servile revolts and plots in Virginia. Also many Black and white servants successfully escaped (to Indian territories) and established free societies.

The 20 year period of servile rebellions made the issue of social control urgent for the plantation owners, at the same time as they economically needed to move to a system of perpetual slavery. The purpose of creating a basic White/Black division was in order to have one section of labor police and control the other. As Allen says, “The non-slavery of white labor was the indispensable condition for the slavery of black labor”.

A series of laws were passed and practices imposed that forged a qualitative distinction between white and Black labor. In 1661 a Virginia law imposed twice the penalty time for escaped English bond-servants who ran away in the company of an African life-time bond-servant. Heavy penalties were imposed on white women servants who bore children fathered by Africans. One of the very first white slave privileges was the exemption of white servant women from work in the fields and the requirements through taxes to force Black children to go to work at twelve, while white servant children were excused until they were fourteen. In 1680, Negroes were forbidden to carry arms, defensive or offensive. At the same time, it was made legal to kill a Negro fugitive bond-servant who resisted recapture.

What followed 1680 was a 25 year period of laws that systematically drew the color line as the limit on various economic, social, and political rights. By 1705, “the distinction between white servants and Black slavery were fixed: Black slaves were to be held in life long hereditary slavery and whites for five years, with many rights and protections afforded to them by law.”

We can infer from these series of laws that white laborers were not “innately racist” before the material and social distinctions were drawn. This is evidenced by the rulers’ need to impose very harsh penalties against white servants who escaped with Blacks or who bore them children. As historian Philip Bruce observed of this period, many white servants “...had only recently arrived from England, and were therefore comparatively free from... race prejudice.”

The white bond-servants now could achieve freedom after 5 years service: the white women and children, at least, were freed from the most arduous labor. The white bond servant, once freed, had the prospect of the right to vote and to own land (at the Indians’ expense).

These privileges did not come from the kindness of the planters’ hearts nor from some form of racial solidarity. (Scottish coal miners were held in slavery in the same period of time.) Quite simply, the poor whites were needed and used as a force to suppress the main labor force: the African chattel slaves. The poor white men constituted the rank and file of the militias and later (beginning in 1727) the slave patrols. They were given added benefits, such as tax exemptions to do so. By 1705, after Blacks had been stripped of the legal right to self-defense, the white bond servant was given a musket upon completion of servitude. There was such a clear and conscious strategy that by 1698 there were even “deficiency laws” that required the plantation owners to maintain a certain ratio of white to African servants. The English Parliament, in 1717, passed a law making transportation to bond-servitude in the plantation colonies a legal punishment for crime. Another example of this conscious design is revealed in the Council of Trade and Plantation report to the King in 1721 saying that in South Carolina “Black slaves have lately attempted and were very nearly succeeding in a new revolution – and therefore, it may be necessary to propose some new law for encouraging the entertainment of more white servants in the future.”

We can see the evolution of the creation of whiteness, or a racial identity for white skinned peoples in the Americas, that stood in contrast to the identity of non-white skinned peoples. This created the us against them mentality. Once our allegiances stopped being to other impoverished and servile peoples and were instead changed to allegiances to white people of all classes, we lost track of who the real enemy was. We're still there. The rich people among our own race have us so confused that we'd rather be on the border hunting for brown skinned working people (be honest here, if this was about securing our borders, why aren't we talking about illegal immigrants coming from Canada, or even talking about any white skinned illegal immigrants?) than actually fighting those people that create the social conditions that we all collectively suffer in.

Our blind hatred of non-white people will continue to be the nails in our coffins. Other nails in our coffins will be the continued ridiculous attitudes we show toward women, people with different sexual and gender identities, people with disabilities, and people of different religions.

The rich have been very keen on dividing us up as much as they can, by distorting and magnifying existing divisions and differences among those of us that suffer at their hands. We would rather vote somebody in office that stands against abortion and gay marriage that will still steal our money and exploit us economically than someone we perceive to be on the opposite sides of these issues.

We consistently get used and thrown to the side, just to expand the power of those already above us. We'd rather fight against abortion while we and our five kids go hungry at night than actually organize for better pay, or fight back against those that use us.

It's a sick reality, and yes, the stakes are high in 2008. They're high every year. And deep down, we all know that no matter who of these rich assholes wins this election, we're still going to be screwed, and we're still going to be ranting about the "illegals" stealing our jobs, or the blacks being too criminal, or these crazy hippie liberal lesbians being allowed to marry, while ignoring the rich, white, Christians among us that rake in the profits and power. Wake up! We've fallen for this crap for far too long! No Mitt Romney or Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul or John Edwards is going to save us! Only we can do it... together, as people of all races and backgrounds that are sick of living like this!

This is an open call to all pissed off white skinned working people. This is an open call to ignore the baiting of the Minutemen, to ignore the racialist allegiances that the rich whites try to get us to buy into, to ignore the illogical and ridiculous calls among the ignorant among us! This is a call to reject the idea of whiteness, that is, to reject the idea that our allegiance is somehow determined by what skin pigment we have, no matter whether our real life situations are so different. This is an open call to no longer ignore the fact that our real allies are not determined by skin pigment, but by our social conditions. Our real enemies are mostly white English speaking Christians. Our allies are people of all colors who are forced to work for a living.

Until we get these simple ideas into our head, then we're doomed. Doomed to repeat everything that's happened for the last centuries. We'll still be here trying to climb out of the squalor we find ourselves in, and our children will inherit that destiny as well, and their children after them, and so on... until finally, a generation of white skinned working people realizes that we've been tricked. That we've been used. And by people of our own race. That damned "enemy within".

To meet other white skinned working people (and working people of other skin pigmentation too) who really want liberty and a life worth living, you can reach us at: johnbrowngunclub@gmail.com

Hurry. There's no time to lose. We've been losing for too long.

Signed, respectfully and hopefully,

D.J.

John Brown Gun Club

Lawrence, KS: Indigenous Community takes on Columbus Legacy

by Dave Strano, Kansas Mutual Aid

On a clear October Monday in Lawrence, Kansas, the streets of downtown were filled with nearly 200 people protesting the celebration of Columbus Day. Most of the marchers were students of Haskell Indian Nation University, the only 4 year native college in the nation.

Initially founded as a boarding school for kidnapped native youth, the school served in a broad campaign bu the U.S. Government to break native youth of cultural and traditional beliefs and values in favor of embracing whiteness and white culture.

Though still run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the school has become a place for native youth from across the country to discover a shared cultural identity, and in recent months, has become a hotbead of anti-colonialist organizing within the Midwest.

The march on October 8 was a product of the organizing and effort of several Haskell related clubs and organizations that have demanded that the celebration of Columbus Day ends, and is instead replaced by the celebration of "Indigenous Peoples Day", a celebration already practiced in parts of California and the entirety of South Dakota.

Spearheaded by Haskell's American Indian Studies (AIS) club, the march was also actively supported by other local social justice organizations, including the Kansas Mutual Aid anarchist collective and the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice.

The day started with a rally in South Park, with speakers that included elders and native leaders, Haskell faculty and students, and key organizers within the local native community.

After the gathering in South Park, the streets became alive with with sign, banners, chants and drums. The march proceeded down the length of the downtown economic corridor, along Massachusetts Street to chants of “We will never go away, this is Indigenous Peoples Day” and “Fight imperialism, fight genocide, no more Columbus Day.”

The march was escorted by police officers and agents from the Department of Justice. Police Chief Ron Olin, a long time anti-leftist that teaches counter-terrorism courses at the local University of Kansas was on hand to observe the march as well as several undercover police officers. They included Detective Warren Burkett, a local police officer that has been admittedly assigned to collect information on local anarchists, anti-imperialists, and other radicals. Obviously, the march and related events were taken very seriously by law enforcement at the local and even national level.

Haskell senior Jimmy Beason, local anti-colonialist organizer, said of the event, “It’s a time for celebration. We’re still here, we’re still resisting.”

The day’s events concluded at Haskell, where participants took part in “teach-ins”, film showings, presentations, a potluck and discussions concerning the demonstration and the march.

The march and related events had three specific goals:

To bring enlightenment to the atrocities of Columbus, not the storybook version mainstream education teaches

To educate the public that the government is constantly trying to negate the responsibility it has toward Native peoples

To work toward a permanent change in Lawrence from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day

Nearly a week before the march, members of the AIS club had presented a proposal to the Lawrence City Commission to proclaim Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. The City Commission denied all accountability to the native community by ignoring the request and failing to take any action. Mayor Sue Hack commented, "I think you are exactly right about the history, but our policy has been to not use proclamations to make a political stand or do something that the state should change.”

This statement came despite Mayor Hack herself signing over a dozen proclamations about the names of days and weeks to be celebrated in Lawrence, including a proclamation signed by her to proclaim Tuesday May 15, 2007 as "Peace Officer's Memorial Day.

The name change move wouldn't have been unprecedented. In 1992, the city declared it American Indian Day, but the tradition didn’t stick. The move is less likely to occur today, at a time when the City Commission is dominated by pro-development candidates representing local developers and their interests.

The march and other recent events illustrate a new trend within the radical movements in Lawrence, a notable alliance growing between the mostly white working class anarchist movement and the native decolonization movement. For the past months, the local movements have co-hosted events, met together frequently, and offered each other much needed support on programs and initiatives being organized locally.

As the lines in the sand are drawn even more clear between those in power and those struggling for dignity and survival in Lawrence, the work of organizers in the local native community as well as the alliance and overlap now being fostered between the native and anarchist movements will continue to grow and become more potent.

This movement of movements is not likely to recede until self determination, dignity, and liberty come to all peoples.

Why celebrate a life that we hate?

Our lives encounter minimal moments of comfort and pleasure. Most of our time is spent working for a boss that couldn't care less about our dreams, wants, or happiness. We exist to make someone else a buck, while generally being able to barely afford to keep ourselves and our families fed, clothed, and sheltered. Our minimal needs are barely met week after week, while the business owners and bosses enjoy more commodities than any of us will ever see in our entire lives.

When the drudgery and stress of work is over, we come home with barely enough time to watch television, get drunk, and try our hardest to forget what we had to endure while working. And this is if we even are able to hold down a job. Layoffs, business closings, and mass terminations have made it hard to even keep a secure job.

Those of us that work in this society celebrate any holiday we have off. We try our best to reconnect with our friends and families during these times. The Fourth of July is no exception, and we are quick to light up our grills and crack open a cold beer, while watching fireworks and having passing conversations with loved ones we barely know because we spend most of our time at our workplace.

This is the reality that the majority of us face. This is our life. A life of stress, pain, boredom, and physical, mental, and emotional suffering. And this is the country where we have it good! Imagine what it must be like in South America, Africa, or Asia!

Why do we tend to celebrate an existence that most of the time we curse? Maybe it's because we are afforded so few chances to actually enjoy life that we have to force ourselves to celebrate even when there is nothing to really be happy about.

So why is it that the vast majority of us will never really be able to enjoy life, while a small minority will continue to get richer at our expense? Do our lives really have to be like this? Is this all we have to look forward to, the same “clocked in” existence with a boss breathing down our neck most of the hours of our life? Can we see better days? Or will we continue to drudge away until our retirement days? Can anyone really afford to retire anymore anyway?

Our day to day existence is one that is controlled by others, true. However, we are the ones who ultimately have power over our lives. The trick is to get that power back. We have an undeniable right to life and happiness. It's time we fight for both. Starting tomorrow, after the holiday has ended, will we just go back to our normal lives? Or will we assert our rights, as humans? Will we work to ensure a say in our lives at work as well as back in our communities? The answer is democracy, surely. But democracy that is direct. Where everyone is on equal footing, and we all have the same power, where the lines between boss and worker, student and teacher, police officer and citizen no longer exist.

Tomorrow, when we go into work, let's all insist on being paid a living wage. Let's all ensure that our workplace is safe. Let's all tell our bosses what we really think of them. Let's keep what we produce, and give it directly to our community. If we act tomorrow, we will never have to relive yesterday.

From Lawrence to Iraq: American Freedom Marches On

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. When the ink dried on this document, it sealed the collective fate of not only the people residing in North America, but of people all over the world. In the two hundred and twenty-nine years since dozens of men that owned other men signed that document, the world has come to know the true meaning of American-style Freedom.

From Native Americans to Black Slaves, from Chileans to Iraqis, from working class mothers to prison inmates, the ordinary people of this world have continually suffered while the rich back in the United States profit. Since this country's founding by slave owners and rich colonialists, nothing has changed. The relatively small percentage of people with real wealth in this country still control the rest of us.

Today, with the United States engaged in two ongoing deadly wars halfway across the globe, the people of Lawrence and the rest of this country feel the burden. While our social programs have their budgets slashed, the United States military continues to get the billions of dollars necessary to murder more and more Iraqis, while also getting more and more Americans killed in the process.

In Lawrence, hundreds go hungry every night. Thousands will never be able to attend college, or will receive a substandard education. Most families will struggle to ensure that their children have their basic needs met. Many more will never have health insurance. While it is we, the people of this city and of this country, that make the products, transport the goods, keep communication running, serve the food, and clean up the mess, the few of this country will reap all the benefits of our work. We will die, with barely pennies to show for our hard work, while others will have more products and commodities than they could use in hundreds of lifetimes.

What is it that we're celebrating today? With each firework that explodes in the sky, another life is lost in Iraq. With each burst of color, another child will go hungry here in this country. With each oooh and awww that we shout out during this spectacle of a pageant, our chances of ever seeing what freedom really looks like shrink ever smaller. The patriotism we show today will only be a reminder to those in charge of our fates, just how easily we can be used. How easily we can become their under-paid work force, or the cannon fodder needed for their next offensive.

Our blind allegiance makes this horror that fills our lives possible. Only our collective refusal will make that horror go away. In 1775, after the first draft in this country's history took place (one might wonder why people would have to be drafted to fight in a revolution...), a major riot of workers and the poor took place in Boston. Fighting against the draft, the workers yelled at the rich “patriots” gawking out their windows, “Tyranny is Tyranny! Let it come from whom it may!”

Whether tyranny is called Fascism or American Democracy, it still remains tyranny. What is it that we are celebrating? When we celebrate today, we celebrate our own betrayal and our own suffering. When we celebrate American Freedom, we ensure American Tyranny.

The Next Battle of the Social War: Nine Black Panthers and State Repression

by Dave Strano

January 23, 2007 should be a day that lives in infamy within the movements for social justice in North America. On that date, the nearly four decades long war on the Black Panthers was shown to still exist. Nine individuals, most identified as being members of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, were charged with murder or murder related crimes by officials in California. The incident in question involved the killing of a police officer inside the police station in which he worked in 1971. Over 35 years later, the struggle that the killing of the officer symbolizes is alive and strong.

By 1971, the resistance movements of the late 1960's had started to go underground. A large scale low intensity war was being fought by armed clandestine militants against the mechanisms of state and capitalist power. One of those groups was the Black Liberation Army.

The Black Liberation Army was formed by former members of the Black Panther Party that had left the Party due to a variety of reasons. The members of the BLA saw the Party being torn apart from infiltration, state sponsored chemical warfare (the purposeful influx of drugs by the government to black communities), infighting caused by CoIntelPro, and power struggles amongst the leadership of the Panthers.

The BLA came to represent some of the most committed of the Black Panther Party, with members including Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, and Ashanti Alston. The BLA existed to continue the fight the Party had started.

A feeling pervaded amongst the membership of the BLA that they had to go underground even to survive. With pressure coming from sectarians active within the Black Panthers on one side, and the government on the other, the BLA went underground in 1970.

On August 29, 1971, according to police reports, several men crowded into the Ingleside Police Station in California and fired a shotgun through a hole in the counter glass. A civilian file clerk was wounded, while Sgt. John V. Young was killed.

Later in 1973, among thirteen black militants arrested for the crime, Black Panthers John Bowman, Ruben Scott, and Harold Taylor would all be targeted as being the men that had killed Sgt. Young. In New Orleans, the three would be arrested. San Francisco police officers that were working with the FBI to solve the killing, Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz, were flown to New Orleans to aid in the questioning of Bowman, Scott, and Taylor.

The three Panthers refused to cooperate with the investigation. They then faced days of torture at the hands of New Orleans police officers, including physical abuse and mental and emotional manipulation. In 1975, when the matter finally went to court, a federal judge threw out the charges citing that all the evidence against them had been extracted through the use of torture.

In 2003, the case was reopened with the use of a grand jury. The two SFPD police officers that had been responsible for the torture of the three Black Panthers were put back in charge of the investigation. They were deputized by the federal government and started to work side by side with the FBI on the investigation.

When the original grand jury had ended with no indictments, the State of California opened another one in 2005, bringing five former Black Panthers to be questioned. Hank Jones, Ray Boudreaux, John Bowman, Harold Taylor, and Richard Brown all resisted the grand jury and were eventually jailed and released.

Now, in late January of 2007, all of those that appeared before the jury, save John Bowman who died of liver cancer on December 23, 2006, are among the nine militants now being charged with the killing of Sgt. Young. The others being charged in the case are Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim (both currently imprisoned political prisoners on charges of killing a different police officer in New York), Francisco Torres, Richard O'Neal, and Ronald Bridgeforth. Bridgeforth is currently the only suspect not in custody and his whereabouts are unknown to the government.

Just as in December of 2005 when over a dozen environmental resistance movement members were arrested and indicted on charges related to "Operation Backfire", the movements of social justice are under attack. We must view these new arrests in the historical context in which they were conducted.

In the 1960's and 1970's the U.S. government waged an open war on the resistance movements that had grown against White Supremacy, the war in Vietnam, Patriarchy, and the entire capitalist system. Using many tactics, the government was able to destroy and subdue most of the organizations and factions involved within these movements.

Fast forward three decades later to 2007, where a rising tide of anti-capitalist momentum in the form of organizing and movement building is flooding the world. From Oaxaca to Olympia, organized social movements are again gaining strength and taking the state and global capitalism head on. As public opinion shifts strongly against the "War on Terrorism", and new forms of social resistance are starting to rise, we've seen an increased attack on members of resistance movements in the U.S.

The U.S. government would not have reopened this case if it did not intend on sending a message to all those who resist. As we've seen with Operation Backfire, the arrests in Auburn, California, FBI harassment of members of the Great Plains Anarchist Network in 2004, and in many operations in the last ten years, the government is trying to send a clear message. "Don't dare stand up."

As cases like that of Eric McDavid and Brendan Walsh illustrate, we have not handled ourselves well as a movement under this type of attack. The former has been languishing in a prison cell for over a year awaiting trial, and the latter is a young anti-war militant who has been imprisoned and nearly forgotten for the last three years.

Add to these incidents the sudden news that all of the remaining captured defendants of Operation Backfire have pleaded guilty, and we start to see that we need to come up with better ideas of how to support members of our movements when they are attacked by the state.

For years, prison struggle and prisoner issues have been on a back burner within the larger anarchist milieu. Small groups of anarchists have done what little they knew how to support political prisoners and those reeling from repression. We cannot afford to ignore these issues as a larger movement any longer. We are under attack. If we don't defend ourselves now, with innovate new methods, then we will falter and we'll just watch as nine more comrades are imprisoned.

Our movement has to go beyond signing petitions, raising legal funds, and calling prison administrators and government officials. We have to create a movement based on real revolutionary solidarity. When the government attacks, we need to be offering support to families of those they have attacked. We need to be organizing with community leaders in those communities that are targeted to link our mutual struggles. We need to be ready to "turn up the heat" and intensify what may already be intense local efforts.

For a movement short on answers, I don't have many either. This has been an issue I've been grappling with for years, trying to figure out what more I can do to help those that are imprisoned or are facing prison. One thing has been blindingly clear, however: our current models don't work. Pressure on economic and political interests that comes from a community social movement will always work better than trying to fight our battles through petitions and courtrooms. So what the hell does that mean exactly?

The answers seem so much easier when you are reading a book about social movements in the 1970's that hijacked helicopters or broke into prisons to free their captured comrades. Now in 2007, those options seem so far removed from the reality of our movement that is still healing after going into near extinction following September 11th.

One thing is certain in this era of unanswered questions: we must place the struggle to free these Panthers, Eric McDavid, Brendan Walsh, and all other political prisoners at the forefront of our work. We must learn how to connect the new and old generations of political prisoners with the work we're doing in the streets. We need to make sure that every damn person in our cities knows who these people are. We need to ensure that when we are organizing against the war, we are also organizing to free those that resisted war. We need to ensure that when we're working to save the earth, we are working to free those that have been imprisoned fighting for it.

We have to be able to view our movements in the context of a history of social movements in the U.S. that dates back to at least 1492. We need to ensure that we do not leave people like Eric McDavid to sit in a jail cell for a year without massive actions demanding his release. We need to ensure that we don't allow them to imprison these Panthers.

We need to ensure that we don't act like we always have, and forget. We as a movement have forgotten those that fill the prison cells and those that face them. Let's remember. And never forget. Let's never leave those facing imprisonment hanging ever again. When they face those cells, let them face them with a strong movement beside them.

Freedom for the Panther 9! Freedom for all political prisoners! For the abolition of all cages!

******

Dave Strano – Kansas Mutual Aid

East Lawrence, the Bo Harris Redevelopment Plan, and the Search for Democracy

Background

I'm a relatively new resident in the East Lawrence Neighborhood, but as soon as I moved here I worked to try to get involved with the local Neighborhood Association. As a non-college student renter living in the Oread Neighborhood for several years, I had always wanted to live in a neighborhood surrounded by other working class people. I had always heard of how strong and organized the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association was, and this made me sufficiently jealous while living in the Oread.

Upon attending my first meeting of the Neighborhood Association in November of 2005, my partner and I were asked to join the Board of the Association. We very happily accepted this offer, and joined the ranks of some amazingly dedicated residents of the neighborhood.

One of the first issues that I came to work on right away was the neighborhood's response to the a proposed redevelopment plan of an area located at 8th and Pennsylvania Streets by developer Bo Harris. There was much contention over one of the proposed zones within the project, a zone (Zone 3) that would create 54 housing units on one square block and alone could effectively gentrify the entire area surrounding the development. This part of the neighborhood is home to some of the poorest residents of the neighborhood, and any change in property values would significantly affect the population of that area.

Throughout the process of the proposal for the development, Bo Harris had met with the neighborhood residents to try to feel his way around the development question. Despite the meetings, it wasn't until nearly three years later, and right before Harris was to get his zoning approval that the contents of proposed development of Zone 3 of the project surfaced. Many felt that despite Harris' voiced good intentions, he had deceived the neighborhood by withholding the plans for Zone 3 until December of 2005, although the development planning had started as early as 2002.

The Neighborhood Association took quick measures to hold meetings and organize approaches to stopping this zone of the development (Zone 3). Many months of meetings within the Association, and many months of intense dialogue and negotiations with Bo Harris resulted in two major developments. The first and most impacting of these, was the creation of a new body within the neighborhood of neighbors who were growing frustrated with what they viewed as a Neighborhood Association that wasn't willing to stand up to Harris: the Old East Lawrence Preservation Alliance. This body was effectively a break away group from the Neighborhood Association, and drew members that stood solidly opposed to the proposed development.

The second thing to occur was a compromise agreement reached by the OELPA, the ELNA, and Bo Harris. This agreement, after many weeks of arguments, was crafted to not only change the face of the proposed development project, but also to include safeguards for the residents of East Lawrence to help resist gentrification, traffic, and density concerns. These ideas included a fund to assist elderly and poor residents pay for their property taxes, tax rebates for said populations, and a traffic summit to focus on alleviating future traffic concerns for the neighborhood.

In the final hours before the City Commission was set to meet to approve the first phases of the plan needed for development, word came that the ideas for a site plan that were included within the compromise position would not be feasible from the perspective of the Historic Resources Commission, nor the Planning Commission. This was a serious blow to the compromise agreement, a blow that lead to the questioning of the compromise by the developer, and that basically has at this point, effectively killed that idea for the development.

A tense City Commission meeting ensued in which City Commissioners had to debate on the merits of granting the rezoning requests necessary to allow Harris to develop his intended project. Much debate went back and forth from the public, with the majority of the neighborhood residents that spoke voicing frustration over the process, the project, and with the City. Most that spoke asked for the vote to be deferred until a later date, until more time was available to reach another compromise position.

City Commissioner David Schauner laid out the oppositions core argument the best, when he went on to explain that for the last several weeks, residents of the neighborhood had worked with an understanding that the compromise position reached by the parties involved was where the project stood. Now, those thoughts had been squelched, and the residents had no bargaining chip available against the developer if the City voted to rezone the area. A vote to rezone would basically clear the way for the development, whether the residents liked the outcome or not.

Despite Schauner's astute understanding of the process, the Commission voted 4 to 1 to rezone the property and adopt the development guidelines that would allow for Harris' proposed development. This vote, despite assurances from the City that it would do everything in its power to meet the demands of the compromise position such as the fund for the elderly and poor besides the site plan demand, left many members of the Neighborhood Association feeling like they had suffered a loss.


Process and Democracy

Democracy is defined as the rule of the people. The United States of America, a nation supposedly founded on Democratic principles of the rule of the people, has developed different models and forms of what are accepted as Democratic processes. The City Commission is one of these processes, as well as the sub-bodies that work for the Commission, including the Planning Commission and the Historic Resources Commission. The legitimacy of their being Democratic processes is at best, however, questionable.

With the Bo Harris development as an example, we can start to look at how the various bodies that are supposed to represent the will of the people are actually used to usurp that will, and indeed work for the interests of entities other than the residents of the neighborhood in question.

To move further in this discussion, we must understand that there are conflicting interests and conflicting populations within this scenario. The first of these would be the actual residents of East Lawrence. This is a diverse group of people with different goals, hopes, and aspirations, as well as differing class backgrounds, political opinions, religions, races, etc. However, East Lawrence is by far, a mostly working class and poorer neighborhood, and one of the most racially mixed of all the neighborhoods in Lawrence.

The second of these groups would be the Bo Harris construction firm, a firm that may have some employees that live in East Lawrence, but by and large, is mostly removed from what happens in that neighborhood, and has little real interest in what occurs in that neighborhood unless it affects that business' profit margin.

The third of these groups is the City. The word "City" is used in this context to describe the members of the various bodies of the City Government, including the City Commission, the executive ruling body of the city. This term also includes the Planning Commission, the Historic Resources Commission, and all other entities that are involved in the processes of the city. The City, although individual employees of which may live in East Lawrence, is an entity that also by and large has very little interest in what occurs in East Lawrence unless it affects the profit, the authority, or the workings of the City governance.

Of these three groupings, only one has any real interest in what happens in East Lawrence, and this interest is a vested interest, that for many means life and death. The residents of East Lawrence have the most at stake of any of these bodies whenever any decisions are made about the neighborhood. At the end of the day, it won't be the members of the City Commission or Bo Harris that have to really live with the development in East Lawrence. Instead, the residents of East Lawrence will become those truly affected by these decisions.

Under the idea of Democracy, the people with the most at stake should be those that have the biggest voice in the processes that affect their lives. At least, that's how I've always understood the idea of "rule by the people." What people and what rule? That's determined by who's affected by what decisions. For a system of governance to be Democratic, the system has to be set up in such a way such that the people who are affected by decisions have a say in those decisions. This was the social theory and philosophy that was supposedly developed to bring freedom after centuries of aristocratic and monarchist rule.

Instead, what has clearly happened, as is illustrated by this redevelopment project, is that the people with the most to lose in the process are also given the smallest voice in the process. The developer and the city work out most of the details, and indeed, the city works to advocate for the developer.

In this instance, members of the City's planning staff met with Harris and employees of Harris in private meetings to help develop the project, figure out ways to push the development forward, and find ways to help Harris pay for the said development. The City took and takes an active role in aiding developers. This process starts to blur the lines between these two entities, and starts to create a conflict between two entities: on one side the city and the developer, and on the other the residents of the neighborhood. And in the end, which side will actually have the state-sanctioned power to decide what happens in the neighborhood?

So where does this leave the actual stakeholders within this process, those that live in East Lawrence? It must be clear that no matter where one stands on this development process, any resident of East Lawrence has to plead their case in front of the City, a body that has already done everything in its power to aid the developer and also looks to gain tax revenue from the project. Does the neighborhood have final say in the matter? No. The City does.

So, it rightfully frustrated many residents of East Lawrence to have to make pleas in front of a body of five people who don't even live in the neighborhood in question. It's a natural response to become upset with a process that allows people with no direct ties to an area to make all the decisions for that area.

This was the scene that played out on August 8th, when the City granted the zoning and guidelines requests to Harris for his development. Five people that did not live in East Lawrence gave permission for a person that also does not live in East Lawrence (and who fits into an economic bracket that most residents of East Lawrence can only dream of) to change the fate and destiny of East Lawrence.

You may be asking yourself, just as I was and still am: where is the rule of the people here? Where is the democracy?

In fact, the only agreement actually reached by a democratic process, the compromise agreement has already been effectively shut down by the City. That same entity that holds all the power though they don't have the same interests of the residents of East Lawrence.


The Death of Community Control

This conflict of interests, this battle being waged within the framework of supposed Democratic processes is taking place all over the country and the world. This isn't anything unique to Lawrence, or unique to this project. In fact, it's this same struggle that has produced civil wars, rebellions, class warfare, and strife across the globe, from Chiapas in Mexico to Los Angeles in the United States.

This same struggle, the social struggle for where power should be centered is at the heart of debates currently happening across the country in reference to the War in Iraq, minimum wage and labor standards, medical care and insurance, and countless debates about social equity and justice issues.

The process that has occurred over the last centuries, of slowly eroding hard fought gains for control within communities, and handing that power over to state-sanctioned bodies has been a process that has resulted in the stripping of the power away from the people, and the concentration of all power in the hands of a few.

This is not Democracy. In fact, by definition, this is Plutocracy. This is not to say that there are no democratic processes left in the United States. However, this is to say that every time we hand power to a city or state government that has little true interest in what we, the residents of these neighborhoods actually are affected by, then we have handed power away from the community and to the select few.

In short, what the Harris redevelopment project has illustrated, is that no matter what your stance on the development, if you were a resident of East Lawrence, you really didn't have any power over the final decision, unless you were willing to take power into your own hands.

In fact, this is what was indeed shown by the Neighborhood Association, a committed group of individuals that throughout the process took power into its own hands and decided to make Harris' life a living hell until he had dealt with the body.

In the end, though, these efforts, as well organized and powerful as they were, were still overshadowed by the show of power from the City, who acted as final judge over the merits of the project.

In a Democracy, shouldn't the neighborhood have all the power to decide what happens in it? We are the ones that have to live with it, right?


Moving Forward into the Design Charrette

As the process moves forward to the design charrette to take place on August 26th, it is important to remember who has the actual power, and who has the perceived power in this process. The residents of East Lawrence have the power in this situation, and Bo and the city have the perceived power.

We can't be afraid to ask for everything we want in this process. We must keep clearly in mind that one of the only reasons that the charrette came into being in the first place is because the Neighborhood Association acted quickly to counter Bo's push for quick development and demanded a place at the table for discussions about Zone 3. Bo is only in this position because we forced him into it. This isn't to say that Bo may not be the nicest man in the world, but the social role he plays as a developer means he doesn't work from his conscience but from his pocketbook. There's an understanding that if he can include the neighborhood in his project, and get all complaints out of the way, that he can make some money and not look forward to long drawn out complaints or even lawsuits.

We hope to ensure that the OELPA is fully involved in the charrette process as well, so that these ideas can also be put into practice. The charrette process is a great way for us all to get what we want. Should this charrette have happened before the city granted zoning and the UCD? Yes. But now that we are here, we must use this democratic tool to craft a project that even if we're not happy with, we can have some say over. Though this process isn't totally or directly democratic, we need to use any tools of democracy handed to us to ensure that community power continues to stay concentrated with those that live in East Lawrence.

Ideally, in a really democratic world, someone wishing to start a development process would approach the neighborhood body and ask permission, then go through a charrette process to come to the outcome, without the City being able to move the project ahead of the expectations of the residents of the neighborhood.


Conclusions: The Future of Democracy in Lawrence

Although, as I have stated, this situation is not unique to Lawrence, it is my opinion that was is indeed unique, is that the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association is willing to take power into its own hands (where this power belongs in the first place) to make changes that need to happen within its neighborhood.

I think basically every member of the association can agree, that in a truly Democratic society, the power is within us as a neighborhood, and indeed that is the reason that ELNA exists in the first place.
These developments are truly hopeful when considering the future of Democracy in Lawrence. However, more concrete steps will need to be made by the Neighborhood Association in the future to ensure that the association fulfills its hopes and aspirations of engendering a democratic tool.

As the author of this piece, and as a Board member for the Neighborhood Association, I have several suggestions and goals that I would like to see come out of this battle against gentrification and for people power within our neighborhood.

Firstly, I would like to see the Neighborhood Association create a block liason program that ensures that a member of the Board or someone reporting to the Board is in contact with each and every resident of each block. This could work much like our intentions with the now put on hold efforts of the East Lawrence Neighborhood Safety Network. Either the Board could be comprised of representatives of each block or series of blocks, or such liasons could exist and report to the entire association autonomously.

The merits of this suggestion is that I feel this would naturally lead to more diverse body of the neighborhood association that is also directly democratic and in communication with everyone that lives within the neighborhood.

Secondly, I would suggest that before each meeting of the Association, Board members or other members or block liasons took an active role of canvassing their neighbors to alert them as to what was on the agenda at the meeting, and encourage attendance at the meeting.

Thirdly, I would recommend that the ELNA take a more active stance in the development of Direct Democracy by having an attitude shift. We are the residents of this neighborhood. We will make the decisions that this neighborhood. If we as a Neighborhood Association want to create safety programs, let's do it... if we as a Neighborhood Association want to help create tenant's unions to combat slumlords, let's do it... if we as a Neighborhood Association want to repair sidewalks, then let's do it. I know this sounds obvious and redundant and that these are already the opinions of many in the Neighborhood, we must really formalize the idea that the Neighborhood Association can be, and indeed, must be, the decision making organization for the neighborhood... one that is Directly Democratic, and based on equality and cooperation.

Fourthly, I would recommend that as much as possible, roles within the Association be rotated so members of the Association can all feel to be a part of the processes of the Association and so that power isn't concentrated in the hands of a few.

Finally, I would recommend and propose the creation of an internal body or working group within the Neighborhood Association that is to aid in the development of a truly Democratic process and become a think tank for new programs and projects we can take on and make these proposals to the rest of the group.

I know I'm a newbie to the Neighborhood Organization, and I seemingly have a lot to say about processes and organizations I am very new to, and may have because of this, made assumptions or conclusions that seem invalid or naive. I understand this perspective, and I write this statement not to push my own will on the Neighborhood Association, or advance my own political ideas, but instead so that we can start a process that is built from a foundation of Democratic and free processes.

Also, I want to reinstate that the reason that I love this neighborhood is because of the strong, capable people that make up the neighborhood and ELNA, and without people like KT or Janet, I don't know where I'd be.

It is my hopeful belief, that although it seems that the power of neighborhoods and the people within them is being stripped away and usurped by people with more money and perceived power, that we in East Lawrence can continue to strive for a community body that keeps power where it belongs. This struggle is at the heart of every issue of social justice, and our work to create Democracy in our Neighborhood can also be a part of a greater struggle for social justice and liberty across the board. The struggle for neighborhood power can also be the same struggle to stop warfare, poverty, hunger, class division, and oppression. We must start to understand that all of these social ills stem from one greater social ill... the concentration of power in the hands of the few. If we work to take back our power as a neighborhood and as a community, then we directly challenge those power relationships that destroy lives all around us.

The future holds much promise, and East Lawrence can be a major victory in this struggle for where power should rest. I look forward to hearing from you all, and I look forward to our continued work together.

For a future based in real power for all people.
For Democracy and Liberty.

Dave Strano
1235 New York Street
8/9/06

Consequences of Global Capital: Katrina, Iraq, and Resistance

Despite the common consensus among Iraq War opponents that the war in Iraq was fought not because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but because of oil, the rise of global capitalism and the U.S. role in this economic order was what led the U.S. to invade. In order to understand the nature of the relationship between capitalism and war, and the very nature of all modern wars, we have to start to look at the conflict in Iraq in a different context.
In an article written for the online paper, Flame, Australian Journalist Geoffrey Heard puts it this way, “The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world.” His support for this statement is varied, but centers around the transfer of the currency of trade of Iraq's oil from the U.S. dollar to the E.U. Euro. This move under Saddam's leadership in late 2002 effectively took the control of Iraq's oil industry away from U.S. markets, and gave control directly to the markets of the European Union.
The War in Iraq became a war to maintain the United States as the world's only superpower. As Heard puts it: “Locking the world back into dollar oil trading would consolidate America's current position and make it all but impregnable as the dominant world power -- economically and militarily.”
The efforts to restructure the oil trade were not the only threats Saddam Hussein's rule posed to U.S. hegemonic control over foreign markets. Like the rest of the “Axis of Evil”, Iraq stood alongside North Korea and Iran in its refusal to accept IMF and World Bank loans and the Structural Adjustment Policies that those loans would mean.
At the time of the invasion, according to CNN Money reporter Mark Gongloff, Iraq's debt was at least $60 billion. The IMF and World Bank had tried for years to get Saddam to accept a loan package from the monetary organizations to pay off this debt. However, such a loan package would have also included the right for the IMF and the World Bank to forcibly advise Iraq on how to restructure its economy. Traditionally, this has meant that in IMF countries like Argentina, social programs, education, and state run healthcare are the targets of massive budget cuts, whereas the military, police, prisons, and projects that can open up a country's economic market to foreign corporations (dams, roads, seizing communally owned land) become the focus of the new economy.
In a statement released by the IMF in April of 2003, it became very apparent that although Saddam had barred the entrance of the IMF and World Bank into Iraq under his rule, the current reality is far different. "The World Bank and the IMF stand ready to play their normal role in Iraq's re-development at the appropriate time," said the statement. Several months later, offices were opened for the IMF and World Bank's Structural Adjustment Policy work in Baghdad.
The reasons the United States invaded and now currently occupies Iraq speak to the very nature of all wars. Wars, simply, are fought for power and control. In a more detailed evaluation, they are fought for economic and social control over economic markets that are not yet controlled by the aggressor. These markets may be wanted for resources, labor, consumer power, or for a number of other reasons. Because of this, global capitalism and war are inseparable. One cannot exist as we know it without the other.
While the conflict in Baghdad seems a world away from the shores of the Gulf Coast, the people of Iraq are facing the same struggle as the people of New Orleans: The struggle to persevere and survive in the wake of a travesty fueled by global free market capitalism.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the face of capitalism is being unmasked for all to see. The scene has been set: the poor, mainly non-white, people of New Orleans struggling to survive, begging for food and water, while armed National Guard troops patrol neighborhoods and shoot anyone trying to get food and water from now flooded and abandoned stores. The “rule of law” and the value of property is more important than the lives of thousands of people. Instead of food, the Army has been giving nothing but live ammunition. Instead of humanitarian aid, the administration has created a virtual police state, with the National Guard even being ordered to keep the Red Cross out of the disaster zone.
And now, with firms like Haliburton and Bechtel receiving rebuilding contracts in New Orleans (the same corporations that have received contracts in “post-war” Iraq), the links between corporations and Iraq and New Orleans are even more glaringly obvious. According to CNN Money Reports, firms that are given government contracts to rebuild Katrina stand to gain as much as $5.8 billion.
One can only assume that this legacy will be sustained in the aftermath of the now developing Hurricane Rita, and the poor will bare the brunt of the devastation and major corporations will profit.
The legacy of capitalism may be of war, class division, racism, and massive exploitation, but it is also one of resistance. The people of Iraq are resisting the occupation of Iraq, through nonviolent civil disobedience and even armed struggle. The people of New Orleans have continued to organize their own health collectives, their own food distribution, and even their own self-defense against the actions of the National Guard and local police. And the people of the world, in every workplace and community, have started to self organize and take back real democracy: politically, economically, and socially.
It is now up to us, the movements for justice of the United States, to organize, challenge each other and ourselves, and start to work toward a future worth living in. Only by building concrete alternatives to capitalism and by confronting the rise of authoritarianism by any means applicable, can we hope to see that future.