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Practical Anarchy Online Issue 3.1
P r a c t i c a l @ n a r c h y
O N L I N E
Issue 3.1, September/October 1994
A bimonthly electronic zine concerning anarchy from a practical point of
view, to help you put some anarchy into your everyday life. The anarchy
scene is covered through reviews and reports from people in the living
anarchy.
Editors:
Chuck Munson : cm150@umail.umd.edu
PO Box 179, College Park, MD 20741-0179
Mike McEvoy : mjmc@fullfeed.com
PO Box 173, Madison, WI 53701-0173
Subscription to P@ Online is free in its electronic format and each issue
is anti-copyright and may distributed freely as long as the source is
credited. Please direct SUBSCRIPTION questions to CHUCK at the above
address.
We encourage our readers to submit articles and to send in short items from
everywhere. Local or worldwide doesn't matter--we publish it. Send mail to
the editors.
** NEW P@ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS!!!!!**
In order to make this publication easily available to all who are
interested, and in order to make mail management easier for the editors, we
now offer the following options:
[A] You request that you be put on the mailing list. Send a
subscription message to Chuck. You will be sent the full issue of the zine
each time it is published. Beware that a zine can be awfully big!
[B] You ask to be put on the notification list. You won't be sent the
full issue, but will be sent a short email message announcing the new
issue. You can then retrieve the issue from an archive at your convenience.
[C] You send us nothing. It's up to you to browse the various FTP,
Gopher, BBS, and WWW sites to see if a new issue has come out.
Back issues of P@ Online are available from the following locations:
GOPHER: The only place we know about is the Gopher at The Well (in California)
WWW: Available via the Spunk Press home page:
http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/Spunk/Spunk_Home.html
FTP: etext.archive.umich.edu
[If anybody could set up a Listserv for us, we'd appreciate it!}
**NEW HYPERTEXT FORMAT**
If all goes well, the next issue of this zine will also be available in
hypertext, and will be viewable using such tools as Mosaic and MacWeb. We
are looking for a site to make this avaialble (probably with the Spunk
Press archive). Stay tuned for more details!
=@= PRACTICAL ANARCHY =@=
## Kiss somebody of the same sex in a public place
## Don't register your bike with the cops
## Leave your watch at home
## Don't give your Social Security Number to merchants
## Start a regular Critical Mass ride in your town
## Don't get an ISSN# for your zine. Don't get an ISBN# for your book.
[The editor does not agree with all of the following suggestions; see his
comments at the end of the list. George Ritzer is currently a professor at
the University of Maryland-College Park]
The following is an excerpt from George Ritzer's _The McDonaldization of
Society_ (c)1993 Pine Forge Press.
The following list contains suggested actions that individuals can take
to cope with McDonaldization. In most cases, they assume prior action
by others to create nonrationalized enterprises in those niches.
* Avoid living in apartments or tract houses. Try to live in an
atypical environment, preferably one you have built yourself or have had
built for you. If you must live in an apartment or a tract house,
humanize and individualize it. In fact, the residents of Levittown, the
original tract house community, have done just that so that one now sees
"The Levitt box disguised as a Tudor Manor, a Swiss chalet, a
Pennsylvania Dutch Barn."
* Avoid daily routine as much as possible. Try to do as many things as
possible in a different way from one day to the next.
* More generally, do as many things as you can for yourself. If you
must use various servers, frequent nonrationalized, nonfranchised
establishments. For example, lubricate your own car. If you are
unwilling or unable to do so, have it done at your local, independent
gasoline station. Do not, at all costs, frequent one of the franchised
lube businesses.
* Instead of popping into H&R Block at income tax time, hire a local
accountant, preferably one who works out of an office in the home.
* Similarly, the next time a minor medical or dental emergency leads you
to think of a visit to a "McDoctor" or a "McDentist," resist the
temptation and go instead to your neighborhood doctor or dentist,
preferably one who is in solo practice.
* The next time you need a pair of glasses, use the local store-front
optometrist rather than the Pearle Vision Center.
* Avoid Hair Cuttery and other hair cutting chains; the next time your
hair needs cutting, go to a local barber or hairdresser.
* At least once a week, pass up lunch at McDonald's and frequent a local
greasy spoon. For dinner, again at least once a week, park the car,
unplug the microwave, avoid the freezer, and cook a meal from scratch.
* To really shake up the clerk at the department store, use cash rather
than your credit card.
* Send back to the post office all junk mail, especially that which is
addressed to "occupant" or "resident."
* The next time you are phoned by a computer, gently place the phone on
the floor, thereby allowing the disembodied voice to drove on and
occupying the line so that others will not be bothered by such calls for
a while.
* When dialing a business, always choose the "voice mail" option that
permits you to speak to a real person.
* Never buy artificial products such as Molly McButter and Butter Buds.
* Seek out restaurants that use real china and metal utensils; avoid
those that use material like styrofoam that adversely affect the
environment.
* Organize groups to protest abuses by McDonaldized systems. As we have
seen, these systems do adapt to such protests. If you work in such a
system, organize your coworkers to create more humanized working
conditions.
* If you must frequent a fast food restaurant, dine at one, such as
Macheezmo Mouse Mexican Cafe, that has demonstrated some sensitivity to
the dangers of McDonaldization.
* If you are a regular at McDonald's, develop personal ties with the
counterpeople; try to get to know them. Also, do what else you can to
humanize it. In fact, during the breakfast hours, customers have done
just that' they have "subverted the process" of McDonaldization. Instead
of hastening through their meal, many breakfast customers "come every
day of the week to read their papers, chat, drink coffee, and gobble down
an Egg McMuffin." If breakfasts can be de-McDonaldized, why not other
meals? Other aspects of the fast food experience?
* Make an effort and read THE NEW YORK TIMES rather than USA TODAY once
a week. Similarly, watch PBS news once a week with its three long
stories rather than the network new shows with their numerous snippets
of news.
* More generally, watch as little television as possible. If you must
watch TV, keep the channel selector on PBS. If you must watch one of
the networks, turn off the sound and avert your eyes during commercials.
After all, most commercials are sponsored by rationalized enterprises
and they tout the virtues of rationalization.
* Avoid most finger foods
* For your next vacation, go to only one locale and get to know it well.
* Never enter a domed stadium or one with artificial grass; make
periodic pilgrimages to Fenway Park.
* Avoid classes where tests are short answer and graded by computer. If
a computer-graded exam is unavoidable, make extraneous marks and curl
the edges of the exam so that the computer cannot deal with it.
* Seek out small classes; get to know your professors.
* Go to no movies that have Roman numerals after their names.
It is particularly important that steps be taken to prevent children from
becoming mindless supporters of McDonaldization.
* Instead of using a "McChild" care center, leave your child with a
neighborhood parent interested in earning some extra money.
* Keep your children away from the television as much as possible. It
is especially important they they not be exposed to the steady barrage
of commercials from rationalized institutions, especially on Saturday
morning cartoon shows.
* Lead efforts to keep McDonaldization out of the school system.
* If you can afford it, send your child to a small, non-McDonaldized
educational institution.
* Above all, when possible, avoid taking your children to fast food
restaurants or their clones in other areas of society. If no
alternatives are present (for example, you're on a highway and the only
options are various fast-food chains), blindfold your child until the
ordeal is over.
******* Editor's (Chuck) comments****
1) It's hard for many of us with limited incomes to live somewhere else
other than in an apartment building. Practical anarchy would involve
creating alternatives such as co-ops and cohousing AND challenging the
landlord-tenant system which strangles us.
2) The New York Times has better coverage of international events than do
most small town newspapers owned by chains, BUT is consistently biased and
inaccurate. If you read the Times you should also read "Lies of our Times"
magazine. Also, they don't call PBS the "Petroleum Broadcasting System" for
nothing. Keep your channel tuned to only PBS? What about the commercials on
PBS?
3) I've said it before, I'll say it again. Use McDonalds outlets when your
travel...as rest areas! They're safer, cleaner, and you don't have to buy
anything!
** ELECTRO-RANTS **
@< A big electronic Bronx cheer to all those who write about the Internet
and persist on mentioning the White House's email address. Do they think
that anybody there is listening? Do we care?
@< The Clipper Chip is dead for now. Let's keep it that way. Support
public domain encryption software. If information wants to be free, it's
our duty to keep it way. Remember, government secrecy is incompatible with
a truly free society.
**P@Online Top Ten**
(Chuck's list)
1. The Pagans - Propaganda - Tape
2. Liz Phair - Whip Smart - CD
3. Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart - CD
4. Beastie Boys - Ill Communication - CD
5. Sonic Youth - Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star - CD
6. Frank Black - Teenager of the Year - CD
7. The Match! magazine
8. Fugazi - In On the Kill Taker - CD
9. Neil Young - Sleeps With Angels - CD
10. The Major League Baseball PLAYERS!
7" and record reviews will return with our next issue.
=@= Z I N E R E V I E W S =@=
3V: Global networking newsletter #3 / January/February 1993 [3W Magazine,
461 W. 49th St., Suite 338, New York, NY 10019 USA] A slick new magazine
devoted to users of the Internet. This mag seems to have more substance
than most of the glitzy Internet periodicals. This issue's theme is
"freenets." Includes several lists of resources including World Wide Web,
FTP sites, BBS connections, the Jewish Information Network, and more.($6 /
$36 for 6 issues)
Dreamtime Talkingmail Summer 1994 / Issue 6 [dreamtime village, c/o
Xexoxial Endarchy, Rt.1 Box 131, LaFarge, WI 54639] The biannual
publication of the Dreamtime Village project in rural Wisconsin. This issue
includes articles on "The Permaculture of the Self," "Regenerate culture"
by Gary Snyder, "The no go zone" by Hakim Bey, and "Becoming Native to this
place" by Wes Jackson. Includes updates on Dreamtime projects such as the
Mail Art garden, a calendar of upcoming events, and reviews of zines. Done
in the usual outstanding Dreamtime layout. ($3 sample / $25 for 3 issues)
Feminist Baseball #13 / 1994 [PO Box 9609, Seattle, WA 98109] A nicely
done music zine that is chock-full of music reviews and some zine reviews.
I like the personal flavor and the reviews seem to go into more depth than
mags like MRR. Worth the money. ($3)
The Gadfly vol.10, no.5 [The gadfly, Billings Student Center, University
of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405] An anti-authoritarian newspaper, but also
a student newspaper. Articles tend to cover Native American campaigns,
radical environmentalism, and anti-racist organizing. ($Donation)
Global Mail January 94 / Issue 7 [soapbox@well.sf.ca.us / Ashley Parker
Owens, PO Box 597996, Chicago, IL 60659] An excellent, useful resource for
mail art fans and anybody who wants to network with alternative projects
around the world. Lists mail art exhibitions that are calling for entries.
Also an invaluable source of info on penpals, networks, tape & sound
compilations, email, and zines looking for contributors. ($8)
Incite Information #27 / August 1994 [Mark Hand, PO Box 326, Arlington, VA
22210] A great little libertarian zine. The editor is very open-minded and
unafraid to take on controversial subjects. ($1 / $10 for 6 issues)
Libertarian Labor Review #17 / Summer/Fall 1994 [Box 2824, Champaign, IL
61825] A magazine devoted to discussing issues of interest to
anarchosyndicalists. This issue looks at "The Information Railroad" and
examines the "Prospects for syndicalism." Also, an article on "Marxism: The
negation of communism" by Jeff Stein, and book reviews. ($3 / $12/4 issues)
Live Wild or Die #5 [LWOD, PO Box 15032, Berkeley, CA 94701] An extensive
free-form anarchist tabloid with rants on just about everything. Lots of
cartoons and graphics. Seems oriented towards the action-oriented,
street-fighting wing of the anarchist movement. Worth-checking out--reminds
me of some of the more interesting anarcho-tabloids of the mid-80s.
($$Donation)
Love and Rage vol.5, no.3 / August 1994 [PO Box 853, Peter Stuyvesant
Station, New York, NY 10009] A regular anarchist newspaper which covers
current events. This issue looks at the situation in Rwanda and provides
updates from Chiapas. Also a good source for info on what other anarchist
groups are doing. Includes a transcript of an interview that a collective
member did with Subcommander Marcos. ($1/$13 for 6 issues)
The Match! #89 [Fred Woodworth, PO Box 3488, Tucson, AZ 85722] is one of
the best anarchist periodicals around. One of the most uncompromising
anarchist publications. The police, the church, anarchists, zine
publishers, and more get their due. Includes some fine fiction and an
extensive letters section. Barcodes suck! ($10 / 4 issues)
MSRRT Newsletter February 1994 v.7, no.1 [Chris Dodge/Jan DeSirey, 4645
Columbus Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55407] A newsletter that's not just for
progressive librarians. This issue has an article on the decline of a
community radio station in the Twin Cities. The strength of this
publication is the excellent reviews of alternative books and periodicals.
($15/year)
On Indian Land Winter 1993/1994 [PO Box 2104, Seattle, WA 98111] An
activist newspaper for those who are involved in the various Native
American movements. More political than cultural. Updates on Big Mountain,
Clayoquot Sound, Lyle Point, and Mt. Graham. Find out the latest on
imprisoned folks like Leonard Peltier and Clifford Dann. ($1 / $10 for
subscription)
Out of Bounds Summer 1994 / v.1, no.2 [PO Box 4809, Alexandria, VA 22303]
An eclectic cultural zine with articles and cartoons. Includes book and
music reviews. Includes articles on CIA documents on the death squads of
El Salvador, the police and asset forfeiture, the MTV "youth movement", and
a great rant against greeting cards. (Sample:$4 - $14 / 4 issues)
Quanta July 1993 v.5, no.2 [quanta@andrew.cmu.edu / Quanta, 3003 Van Ness
St. NW #S919, Washington, D.C. 20008] This is a good-looking paper version
of the electronic zine of the same name. Features fiction and nonfiction,
but SF seems to be the focus. ($5)
Second Guess #11 [PO Box 9382, Reno, NV 89507] is one of the best punkzines
around. This issue includes the tour diary of the band Zoinks! Be sure to
check out the zine and music reviews, plus a current list of pranks
(practical anarchy of another kind) ($2)
Slingshot #51 [Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705] An
excellent anarchist newspaper out of the East Bay area. Always a good
source on practical projects. Includes pieces on the Infoshop movement that
is sweeping the continent, the campaign to free women who killed their
abusers, the ongoing crackdown against the homeless in Berkeley, and an
update on the local Food Not Bombs. Recommended. ($2)
Squat Beautiful Winter 1993 [U.K., PO Box 2054, Philadelphia, PA 19103]
It's good to see that squatters have a sense of humor. This zine features a
combination of practical tips, humor, and artistic efforts. Check out the
"Sexy Squatter of the month", learn how to build a solar box cooker, and
take the conscientious squatmate quiz. ($??)
Staring Into the Sun [Pierre Loiselle, PO Box 21533, 1850 Commercial,
Vancouver, BC V5N 4A0, Canada] Poetry, rants, and collages. Looking for
contributors of anti-authoritarian articles, essays, rants, and creative
writing.
TRANET: A bi-monthly digest for the A&T (Alternative and transformational)
movement(s) #89 / July 1994 [tranet@igc.apc.org / Pond St., PO Box 567,
Rangeley, ME 04970] A regular listing of resources of interest to social
change activists. Lots of practical resources here, but it seems to cost
too much for what most activists can probably afford. ($$Donation)
University Sentinel vol.3,no.5 [PSU Publications Board (VG), PO Box 751,
Portland, OR 97207] There are few good student newspapers and even fewer
good "radical" student papers. The Sentinel, published by students at
Portland State University, is an exception to the rule of mediocrity. The
design and layout of this newspaper is so superior to the hackwork being
done by typical student newspapers, it is obvious that these folks should
be giving design lessons to student journalists at other universities. This
issue includes articles on the Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico, media
mergers, the practical uses of hemp, and an article on the anarchistic
aspects of the Internet. In fact, this publication shows how familiar the
staff is with anarchism. A Kropotkin quote! Includes a section that lists
what happened on certain days in radical history (The Durutti Column). The
cartoons by radical cartoonist Matt Wuerker are a nice touch.
Weekly Weird News and Filth #11 [Filth / PO Box 426712, San Francisco, CA
94103 / malice@well.sf.ca.us] is a compendium of 79 conspiracy theories
ranging from JFK to cocaine cowboys to UFOs to Andy Kaufman. Not only a
serious look at conspiracies, but includes some humorous theories for comic
relief. Be sure to cut out and put together the Unified Conspiracy Theory
Moebius Flow Chart to see how everything really is connected. ($1)
** CONTACTS **
Affinity Group of Evolutionary Anarchists (AGEA)
AGEA is an address exchange network linking individuals who favor education
and self-organization as the preferred methods of achieving a voluntary,
egalitarian and cooperative society.
For more info contact: Ed Stamm, PO Box 1402, Lawrence, KS 66044-8402 USA
=@= PROJECTS =@=
ANARCHIST COOKBOOK
The editor is collecting recipes for a cookbook to be published in
1995 titled "The Anarchist Cookbook: Recipes by anarchists and their
friends."
Interest in this project so far has been great. The recipes are
rolling in!
Please send your vegetarian and vegan recipes, tips on cooking for
large groups, personal food idiosyncrasies, art, and info on other
resources. Let's show the world what anarchy is all about!
All recipes will be tested in the Practical Anarchy test kitchen.
Bon Appetit!
Send recipes to: Anarchist Cookbook, c/o Chuck Munson, PO Box 179,
College Park, MD 20741-0179
PRACTICAL ANARCHY: The Book
Chuck Munson, Joseph Average, and B. Moody invite you to submit
one, two, or a half dozen articles to an edited collection on the theme of
Practical Anarchy. We aim to publish this collection in book form within
one year (Summer 1995).
Topics will include, but not limited to:
@ Food production, consumption, and distribution (horticulture,
husbandry, community sponsored agriculture, communal farming, urban and
neighborhood gardening, buyers co-ops, food politics: problems and
solutions)
@ Housing
@ Integrated strategies for local political organizing in
neighborhoods and on campuses
@ Women's health, self-defense, domestic violence, and gender
relations (self-help methods and institutional development, e.g. clinics)
@ "Crime" and anti-social acts
@ Economic planning issues
@ How-to ideas and strategies (development of a people's bank of
goods and services, rotating credit funds, gift-giving circles, microradio,
autonomous and democratic media, hostelries, bicycle repair collectives,
study groups, free universities)
@ Education and child rearing
To submit articles, or to get a writing contract and more info, write to:
Joseph Average, c/o Bloomington Anarchist Union, PO Box 3207, Bloomington,
IN 47402
To get an electronic copy of the writing contract contact Chuck at
cm150@umail.umd.edu
SPUNK PRESS
Spunk Press is an independent publishing project whose goal is to collect
anarchist, alternative and underground materials in electronic format and
make them available free of charge. Although our archive is located on the
Internet ( a worldwide network of five million people), we want to reach
out into the world of bulletin boards and personal computers and to those
without computer access. We want to help editors and writers to convert or
produce their works in an electronic format and use our distribution
channels (electronic archive sites, e-mail address lists, etc.) We are
seeking submissions of fanzines, pamphlets, books, articles, interviews,
reviews, posters, and other material, both in print and out of print.
Currently archived selections include Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, a
history of the IWW, Practical Anarchy magazine, H.Bey's T.A.Z., and a
Situationist bibliography. You can submit material either via the Internet
or on a PC or Mac diskette. You can receive material via the Internet (FTP
to etext.archive.umich.edu and access directory /pub/Politics/Spunk), or by
sending a diskette. For more information and a copy of our current catalog,
contact Spunk Press by electronic mail at spunk@lysator.liu.se or write to:
Spunk Press, c/o ACF Freedom Bookshop, 84B Whitechapel High Street, London
E17QX, UK. or
Spunk Press, c/o Practical Anarchy, POB 179, College Park, MD 20741-0179, USA.
The electronic Spunk Press archive was last updated in July of 1994 and
contains over 400 items. The next update will occur soon.
==== MIDWEST PUNK SHOW LISTING ====
A list of upcoming punk shows in the Midwest is available from
<aa704@po.cwru.edu>. This is not a LISTSERV, so send a nice, personal
message for more information.
Another punk-related information source is: TREADWAY@MPS.ohio-state.edu. To
be added to the mailing list, write: TREADWAY@MPS.ohio-state.edu
================================
DIRECT ACTION MANUAL
REVIVED BY BLACK FIST COLLECTIVE
Houston-based grouping seeks support and contributions
for the Direct Action Manual project
-------------------------
The Houston, Texas (USA)-based Black Fist collective is putting
forth a call for contributions to a newly revived Direct Action Manual.
The Direct Action Manual was initiated by the (now dissolved) Web
Collective in San Francisco, California (USA), but was canceled in early
1994 due to lack of support.
The Direct Action Manual project's end result will be a book with
information on taking direct action in your community. We're also looking
for international contributions. In addition, the Black Fist collective
will be expanding the project to include aspects of grassroots organizing
as well as organizing solidarity/defense campaigns, prisoner support and
perspectives on building a diverse and active movement.
Please make a note that the Black Fist collective is starting from
square one - any materials/contributions that were sent to the Web
Collective are not in the possession of Black Fist and should be re-directed
to the Houston collective. Any and all forms of publicity for this project
should make note of this fact.
Support and publicity for this project is critical. The Direct
Action Manual needs articles, art and money to help this project grow and
really take off. Please direct all correspondence, submissions and
financial contributions (in blank postal money orders or well-concealed
cash) to Black Fist, 15110 Bellaire, Box 317, Houston, Texas 77083, USA.
*@* New Electronic Anarchist Zine *@*
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
B L A C K F I S T
Street knowledge for the radical massive
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
ELECTRONIC ISSUE ONE
HARD COPY ISSUE EIGHT
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=2=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Malcontents
GIVING PROPS: EDITORIAL STATEMENTS
What is Black Fist
NEWS AND VIEWS
The Goldfront Project: Reparator-anarchist alliance
James Harry Reyos: Native American's case an injustice
New Afrikan, revolutionary nationalist ... and anarchist
DEEP SOUTH ACTIVISMDEEP SOUTH ACTIVISM
Grassroots revolt news
DISTRO INFO
Where to find us
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
THIS COPY IS AN ABRIDGED ISSUE!!!
ARTICLES INCLUDED IN THE FULL ISSUE (AVAILABLE FROM SONICNET):
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Notice from Black Fist members
BFE (Black Fist Electronic) introBFE (Black Fist Electronic) intro
To Steal or Not to Steal?
Some Thoughts on (T/t)heft, (J/j)ustice, and Capitalism
PRI's victory in Mexico a hollow one
Boyling Point: last thoughts on Stonewall
U.S. Postal Pigz: How to protect your mail
ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS SECTION
Futility plus good intentions equals ABC conference
Indigenous Peruvians struggle against Sendero and State Indigenous
Peruvians struggle against Sendero and State
Minneapolis anti-racist's trial set for October
Free Manuel Salazar: victim of racism
Prison Briefs
ON GOGOL BOULEVARD SECTION
News from Nigeria, Poland and worldwide
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
GIVING PROPS: EDITORIAL STATEMENTS AND SHIT
__________________________________
What is Black Fist
Black Fist is a newspaper created by a bunch of
anti-authoritarians. Anti-authoritarians are basically people who do not
feel that the controls exercised over our lives are necessary - like, for
example, the pigs.. Or the government they work for and protect. The people
here do not want this control over our lives and want to see it torn down,
dragged out and burned in the middle of the street.
You can write us about joining up with Black Fist if you want, but
anarchy and self-determination starts at home. Speak out and don't be
afraid to confront those whose ideas are messed up. The biggest cops are in
our heads, and killing yours is the first step to personal revolution.
Subvert authority. Get involved in your community as someone against
authority. Start your own collectives to support others, foster education
authority. Start your own collectives to support others, foster education
and revolutionize. Put out propaganda as much as possible. Actively support
those in Amerikan gulags whose crime is delivering war to oppressors.
Support those around the world in struggle for liberation and justice.
Don't vote - revolt. Your "leaders" become more unimportant when you work
without them.
Black Fist appears out of nowhere on a bimonthly basis. Write us
with your input, poetry, art or articles - your thoughts are important.
Deadlines are the second Saturday of the month prior to publication.
You can get a one-year subscription for $6, but if you can send us
a little more, we can always use it. Donations are very much needed to pay
for printing costs as well as to support our free prisoner subscriptions.
Please make sure to send the money in well-concealed cash or blank postal
money orders.
All the opinions within may not represent all our feelings, but the
exchange of ideas is there. Any reprints should credit this newspaper and
exchange of ideas is there. Any reprints should credit this newspaper and
have our address. Thanks. We try to credit most sources as well.
Black Fist o 15110 Bellaire, #317, Houston, Texas 77083
Electronic mail: st4gz@jetson.uh.edu
=@= C A L E N D A R =@=
AUTONOMOUS ZONE
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
OCTOBER 1994
The Autonomous Zone is a community center for radical information and
action. We provide a non-hierarchical framework and space where people can
develop knowledge and skills vital to building fundamental social change.
Our collectively run infoshop lends and sells hard-to-find radical
literature. We also host practical how-to classes where Chicagoans can
learn from each other. Additionally, we organize educational social events,
such as lectures, coffeehouses, potlatches, and discussions. The resources
and services offered through the Autonomous Zone are collectively organized
on egalitarian anarchist principles of cooperation, mutual aid, equal
participation and consensus decision-making. We hope to create for
ourselves and others, an empowering space free from hierarchy and
authoritarian coercion.
The A-Zone is located at 2045 W. North Ave., a block West of the Damen el
stop. Our hours are Noon to 8pm, Wed. through Sat.
Note that not all of these events are A-Zone sponsored, but we liked 'em
enough to put 'em in anyway! If you have any questions, call the A-Zone
312.278.0775
All events subject to constant change!
Every Thursday: Open Mic at Literary Explosions, corner of Milwaukee,
Damen, & North, 9pm. Don't miss it!
Every Saturday: Tenant's Rights Clinic at the A-Zone, 2-6pm. Call or stop
in for info on your rights as a tenant!
Oct. 2nd (Sat): The Rotifers -- Girlz & Womyn Only. "We are a brand new
femyle only group who want to communicate with other womyn. We plan to do
workshops about things like womyn's health issues, queer issues, racism and
class issues. We are also gonna do FUN stuff like bike rides, cook, and
play basketball. We believe we can grow and EMPOWER ourselves through
learning from EACH OTHER. 7pm, 1579 N. Milwaukee, #304. 486-3205 or
384-2407 for more info.
Oct. 6 (Thur): A-Zone Forum featuring speakers from the Rudy Lozano
Community Rights Assembly and Centro Sin Fronteras talking about their
fight against the city for 9 buildings across from the Lozano school
(Greenview & LeMoyne). They want affordable housing, a free health clinic,
and more; the city wants a parking lot. This is an urgent situation, tied
in with the gentrification of WestTown and corrupt city politics, and they
could use solidarity! 6:30 pm, at the A-Zone.
Oct. 7 (Fri): Stop the Hate! March against violence with Queer Nation.
Rally begins 6:30pm at 644 W. Belmont.
2600 Hacker/Phreak Open Meeting at Third Coast Cafe, 1300 or so N.
Dearborn. 5-8pm. First Friday every month!
Oct. 13th (Thur): Prisoner Support Meeting, for those wishing to do work
around prison issues and restart an Anarchist Black Cross collective.
6:30pm, at the A-Zone.
Oct. 14-17: Midwest Radical Scholars and Activist Conference at Loyola
University, 6525 N. Sheridan. 312.384.8827 for info.
Oct. 15 & 16: Midwest Anti-Fascist Network Founding Conference in Columbus,
Ohio. 614.294.5226 for more info.
Oct. 15 (Sat): Infoshops and Anti-Authoritarian Counter- Institutions
discussion at the Midwest Scholars Conf., hosted by the Autonomous Zone.
3:15 - 5:15pm.
A-Zone Coffeehouse. Open house, vegetarian potluck, and an informal
discussion on Haiti. Come & hang out! 7pm.
World Day of Action Against the IMF and World Bank. Take action!
Oct. 16 (Sun): Anarchist Direct Action discussion at the Midwest Scholars
Conf., hosted by the Autonomous Zone. 3:15 to 5:15 pm.
Anarchism & Young People's Liberation discussion at the Midwest Scholars
Conf., hosted by the A-Zone. 3:15-5:15pm.
World Day of Action Against McDonalds. Let McDeath know how ya feel!
Oct. 17th (Mon): Noam Chomsky speaking on "The 21st Century: Democracy or
Totalitarianism?", 7:30pm, Univ. of Ill., Illinois Room, 750 S. Halsted.
Free.
Oct. 18th (Tue): A-Zone General Assembly. Our monthly meeting open to
everyone to come & find out what we're about and up to, and you're welcome
to come share your views. 7pm, at the A-Zone.
Oct. 19th (Wed): Homocore and A-Zone Bowlathon, featuring Bikini Kill at
the Fireside Bowl on Fullerton.
Oct. 20th (Thur): Spraycan artist D-Zine will show slides of his work and
talk about his experience with graffiti. 6:30pm, at the A-Zone.
Deadline for submissions to (DIS)CONNECTION #2, the 'zine for infoshops and
radical collectives. We're hoping to have it out in mid-November, so get
your stuff in!
Oct. 22nd (Sat): Law & Order Hysteria and the U$ Imprisonment Binge. A
program to discuss crime, imprisonment, and racism, sponsored by the
Chicago National Lawyers Guild and the Campaign to Confront the Racist
Imprisonment Binge. 7pm, at Depaul Univ., Schmitt Academic Center, Room
154, 2320 N. Kenmore. 312.235.0070 for more info.
And coming up November 18-20, the Midwest Radical Networking Conference in
Delton, Michigan. Call the A-Zone for details.
A-ZONE FREE SKOOL WEEKLY SCHEDULE (now 'til Oct.29th): note: Generations
Cafe is at 1561 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor)
Sundays: Bookmaking 12-3pm, at home of Tracy.
Urban Exploration 3-5pm start at A-Zone
Mondays: Lock Management 6-7pm at Generations Cafe
Survival Sewing 8-10pm
Tuesdays: Home Education 8-10pm, every other Tuesday, at Generations Cafe.
Wednesdays: Graphic Design 7pm
Thursdays: Vegan Cooking 6pm 1500 W. Division
Rhythm & Drumming 6-8pm
Revolutionary Anarchism 8pm at Myopic Cafe (Damen & Evergreen).
Fridays: Intro Spanish 12-3pm at A-Zone
Saturdays: Plant Gnosis 10:30am-Noon at A-Zone
For more info on these classes, call the A-Zone, or call Kate at 728-1790.
from the cyberdecks of:
* * *
* * AUTONOMOUS ZONE INFOSHOP
* /\ * 2045 W. North Ave., CHILL 60622 U$A
* /__\ Z * (packages to: Box 420, 1573 N. Milwaukee)
* / \ * phone: 312-278-0775, fax: 312-404-0455
* * email: thak@midway.uchicago.edu
* * *
"People are sheep." -- every leader the world has ever known Anyone have
any mint jelly? Those who would lead must become our prey!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
ANARCHY IN THE UK
OCTOBER 21 - 30 1994
London
Ten Days that shook the world
The biggest ever anarchist festival with over 500 meetings throughout London.
PLUS Anarchist film and video season, live music from those anarchist bands,day
and night, comedy club, poetry festivals, raves, dancing and the best ten days'
social life you're very likely to experience
PLUS All night debates, anarchist eyewitnesses, thousands of foreign agitators,
orgy rooms.
PLUS Direct action, street skulduggery, art mayhem
PLUS Anarchist bookfair, London Greenpeace Fair, Anarchist picnic, indor rally
green action day, Books, comics ,record stalls,Chubawamba,George Melly, Jamie
Reed, Stuart Home, Edgar Broughton, Conflict, Tony Allen.
STOP PRESS Levitation of Parliament Oct 23rd
Street Action against the Criminal Justice bill : Oct 27th
Participants
*Reflective Theatre *Steve Booth *Lodro Dawa * Edgar Broughton Band *Pat V T
West * Working Press * Socialist Film Co-op * Dennis Gould *Aberdeen FIN *Anti
Facist Action *Peter Pavement *Haven Distribution *Slab O'Concrete *Blind Mole
Rat * Soundclash * Oi Plloi *Oxfin *Bad Attitude *Animal *Crossfire Films *Open
Eye * London Anarchist Forum * Freedom Bookshop * Freedom Press * Jamie Reed
*Gee * Bar the Shouting * IWW *Extreme Books(Oregon) *Advance Party Network
*Stuart Home *Neoist Alliance *Legalise Cannabis Campaign*Arnei *Decadent
Action * By-Pass* Chris Walsh * Head *Cool Tan Arts * Peace News * Larry O'Hara
Cyclorama *Giaconda Smile *Jeff Nuttall * Robin Webb * John Rety * Fun Times
*Jigsaw *Ramraid Sound System* Travellers Support Groups *Dave Morris Edinburgh
Fanzine Archive * Despite TV * Exploding Cinema * Madame Snarka *Richard Parry
*Ian Bone * Rodent *Laurens Otter * Gusset * Megadog *Our Day Will Come *
Anarchist Year book *56a Infoshop *Planet News *Mother Clan * Dead Dog Mountain
ALF Support Group*Izvestia(Rennes) *Arthur Moyse *Jeff Cloves *Penny Rimbaud *
Wildcat Comics * Word of warning * South Bristol Anarchists *Kate Sharpley
Library * Rob Johnson * Cliff Harper *Deric Wall * Green Revolution *Anarchist
Book Fair *Pheonix Prss *Anhrefn * Roy Bailey *Armchair Press * New Anarchist
Review * Rebel Press*Green line* Contra Flow *Davey Garland *Faslane Peace Camp
Bugs'n Drugs * Chaos UK * the Roughler *Riff Raff Poets *Ruptured Ambitions *
Earth First * Profane Existance Minneapolis *Shambhala Skin * Motarhate* Spit
head*Round the Bend* Fast Breeder *121 Centre *Mick Parkin* Tony Allen
*Forbidden Planet *Dave Douglas (Hatfield NUM) *London Greenpeace* Green
Anarchists *Freedom* Temple of Psycic Youth *Hunt Saboteurs Assoc *George Melly
*Martin Everett *Libertarian Education *Stephen Hancock* Schwartzennegar
*Cuckooland *Blaggers *Chumbawamba *Conflict *Verso *Alternative Tentacles*AK
Distribution* AK Prss *Active Distribution *Anarchist Distribution *DS4A *Steve
Ignorant *Housmans Bookshop* M11 Link Campaign* A Space(Philadelphia)*Homocult*
Cambridge anarchists *Spunk Press
Central information point during Festival - Conway Hall, Red Lion Square,
London WC2
Programme out now with full details (SAE and 1.00):
Anarchy in the UK 94 PO Box 1096 Bristol BS9 1BW
Main events.
------------
Friday 21st October
Opposing the Criminal Justice Act. 7.30pm Conway Hall
Invited speakers from Advance Party Network
Freedom Network
Hunt Saboteurs Association
Travellers Support Group
SQUASH
Cooltan
Levellers
M11 Link Campaign
European Squaters Group
Saturaday 22nd October
Anarchist Book Fair
10am - 8pm Conway Hall
Organised by New Anarchist Review, 84b Whitechapel High Street, E1
Day gathering for non violent anarchists and anarchist pacifists. Central
London. Organised by Jigsaw.
Evening discussion meeting at Conway Hall. 8pm
Organised by Anarchist Research Group, including Collin Ward
Sunday 23rd October
Levitation of Parliment. Parliment Square 11 a.m.
*** "At 11.23 precisely parliament will rise 500 ft into the air - Heathrow
has been warned to cancel all flights in the area.
Anarchist Post-Levitation Picnic - Hyde Park
Anarchy & Sexual Liberation.
Conway Hall 2-6pm
Meeting organised by Lesbien & Gay Freedom Movement
Thursday 27th October
Direct Action on the street against Criminal Justice Bill.
details to be announced or just do it!
Friday 28th October
Indoor Anarchist Rally 8pm-2am
Venue to be arranged
Discussion meeting. Conway Hall, 8pm
Organise by London Anarchist Forum
Saturday 29th October
London Greenpeace Fair (not Greenpeace International plc)
Conway Hall 10am-8pm
CND March + Rally. Temple Tube to Trafalgar Square, 1 p.m.
An acousic set from the Levellers and others if music licence is granted.
In view of impossibility of getting police permission for a specifically
anarchist march bring black flags to make this biggest ever anarchist street
presence ever.
Sunday 30th October
Anarchist Picnic. Hyde Park, 12-5pm
Conflict at Astoria. Round off the 10 days witn wild night of anarcho-punk
Other events ( ask for details):
--------------------------------
International speakers (huge numbers of them, but many more wanted)
meals, music, theatre, comedy and poetry over whole fesival
Presentation by Ploughshares Support Network
Counter Intelligence Exhibition at 121
Workshops:
Anarchism, violence and non-violence
Consensus Decision making for small and large groups
Liberating our meetings
Speaker meetings and discussions in following areas
The Spanish anarchist movement since 1936
Exhibition by the Kate Sharpley Library
Education , Organised by Lib Ed
Punk, will include Collin Jerwood, Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbauld and many
more.
Anti Fascism, includes many european activists as well as AFA
also Larry O'hara, 'The truth about Searchlight'
Computers and Networking, by Spunk Press and Fast Breeder
Sex
Animal Rights
Paganism/Occult
Women
Green Politics, a vast programme of events
Money
Lesbien & Gay
Industrial
Christian Anarchism
Riots
Squatting
Unemployment
Drugs
Football
There will be sports events too: Pacifists v. Non pacifists
Music:
Mutiny, Cuckooland, Oi Polloi, AOS3 SE8 Culb Oct 25th
Oi Polloi, RDF, Citizen Fish, Sad Society, George Robey Oct 26th
Levellers, Schartznegger, Co-creators Oct 27th, Brixton Academy
Conflict, Dirt, Citizen Fish, Dub Warriors Oct 29th, Astoria (4.30-10.30)
and many more....
Addmission only with festival ticket from Anarchy in UK for above
------------------------------------
ANTI FASCIST CONFERENCE
Midwest Anti Fascist Network (MAFNET) founding conference
Columbus Ohio, Sat / Sun October 15 &16 1994
North High School
workshops / music-performances / speakers / child care / food / booths /
networking / basketball-soccer-volleyball!
"In recent years the undercurrent of intolerance and social injustice in
our society has grown in strength, which is made apparent with the rise of
hate crimes and Klan rallies. It's time to begin building a society of
tolerance with diversity and respect. Come join us at this conference."
For more information call 614.294.5225 or write to
Anti Racist Action (ARA) POB 02097 Columbus OH 43202
Dear friends:
Over the last year or two, we have seen an increase in racist group
activities and hate crimes here in the midwest. In response, many groups and
individuals have held meetings and protests.
As we did this work, people from different cities got to know and work with
each other. We saw the need for an effective, ongoing framework to
organize.
We are happy to announce the founding conference of the Midwest Anti Fascist
Network (MAFNET). This important conference will be held in Columbus, Ohio,
on the weekend of October 15-16,1994. Hundreds of activists will join to
discuss the future of our work and to create a unified network.
In addition, there will be several educational workshops, video
presentations, and speakers. The final agenda is not set yet, but proposed
topics include discussions of our experiences at recent KKK rallies,
African - American / Jewish Unity, legal defense and offense techniques,
anti-gay attacks and organizing against them, and several others.
There will be a social event of some kind Saturday night (bands). And we
will get the network off to a good start by holding an "action" in Columbus
as part of the weekend. Maybe something related to Native American Indian
activities against "Columbus Day"; maybe Klan related, but definitely
something on the street to make our discussions more real.
We have just reacted too long. It is time for us to build our movement in a
more stable, serious organized way. We can increase our numbers, involve
thousands of people, initiate new and imaginative programs to fight racism
-- the possibilities are unlimited.
Please plan to be a part of this historic weekend. Email or write or call
for more information and early registration. we can provide housing, food,
transportation from bus and airplanes, etc. We also will be providing an area
for organizations attending the conference to distribute their literature.
Oh yeah, we can provide child care also, and because of these things, we
will be asking those who register early to contribute $10 (or more) to help
us cover the costs of renting the space etc.
Thanks, and please pass this on. Email if you'd like me to send you USMail
copies of the original flyer.
==@== LETTERS ==@==
LET'S GET ORGANIZED!
Dear Friends and comrades:
Recently I completed a coast-to-coast speaking tour to promote my
newly reprinted book Anarchism and the Black Revolution, and also to raise
funds for the legal defense in the Chattanooga 8 racist frame-up case. I
spoke in 25 different cities to thousands of persons, and gave over 90
separate presentations. The tour not only allowed me to go to new places
and meet many friends and comrades, it also allowed me to size up the North
American Anarchist (and anti-authoritarian) movement, the struggle around
political prisoners, and the state of the Black movement today. I would
like to give you my assessment of where we are, and what I think can be
done to make changes.
The Anarchist and other anti-authoritarian forces are currently in
"ghettos" which are almost all-white, all youth-oriented, all middle-class,
and generally disconnected from the surrounding communities (many of which
are majority African or Hispanic). This cannot be allowed to go on if
anti-authoritarian politics are to become a real force in North American
social life. We must become more ethnically diverse, more action-oriented,
and more community based--if we are serious about a struggle for a social
revolution on this continent. My idea is for the creation of an
Anti-Authoritarian Network of Community Organizers (AANCO), a "united
front" of all those Anarchist forces who think we must build a broader,
more militant movement, which includes "ordinary" people and deals with the
revolution of everyday life. We need a movement of more than "punks",
college youth, or even like-minded Anarcho-activist types in another narrow
"federation".
AANCO is a worker/student/youth alliance; a direct action community based
organization to fight the crippling of capitalism: economic exploitation,
unemployment, homelessness, poverty, police brutality, racism and other
ills of a system in decline. We want to build a movement of thousands--and
ultimately millions--of persons to resist this corrupt system and fight for
a better life, which can only come with a new society.
We believe the old radical Left and syndicalist ideals of the "industrial
working class" grouped into large work sites serving as a revolutionary
class vanguard is outdated, and that the structure of capitalism has
produced a new class of "super-poor" persons who are marginalized and
divorced from any hope of gainful employment under this system. AANCO
believes that because of structural unemployment, caused by automation,
corporate downsizing, de-industrialization and a host of other factors, the
primary site of struggle has now shifted from the workplace to the
community. In fact, we believe that it is in the cities themselves where we
can build a movement to overthrow capital. But while we fight back against
the capitalist state, we must build a new counter-culture and new community
institutions.
We also believe poverty has become "racial-ized" in this country, with
millions of Black and other people of color bearing the brunt of the
current capitalist depression, and now constituting the majority of the new
poor and homeless. Because we recognize that this poverty is no "accident"
and does not hit everyone equally, but is rather a class and race
phenomenon, we realize that we need a Poor Peoples' Survival Movement which
unites the poor of all races, but especially the non-white communities in a
fightback movement. In that sense this movement would "fight racism", while
understanding that fighting racism is more than counter-mobilizations
against the Klan or Nazis, because white supremacy is more than a fascist
vanguard. All the institutions of capitalism are racist, and white
supremacy is an intrinsic part of the ideological and socio-economic
foundations of this system. So we have to fight to destroy the system
itself in order to truly destroy racism. White people must help fight for
the rights of people of color--on the job, on the campuses, and in the
community, and not passively allow the "white power" state to destroy them
with government "anti-crime" programs, "weed and seed", "community
policing" and other repressive initiatives. The state has always depended
on the white population to be accomplices to its criminal activities, AANCO
says NO!
The Poor People's Survival Movement would be a program started by AANCO,
(which is primarily a group of Anarchists and anti-racist activists), and
supported by the Federation of Black Community Partisans, Roots of
Resistance, and a number of local groups in the communities, on college
campuses, in prisons, in workplaces and other institutions all over N.
America. PPSM is a direct action movement of the poor, which will take over
abandoned housing for homeless persons, engage in mass urban squatting,
sit-ins at welfare offices and government buildings, and other acts of
civil disobedience. However, although all of these examples are
non-violent, this is not a pacifist organization; we expect to see food
riots, street fighting, general strikes and ultimately social revolution
break out. We support all of this as leading to our freedom.
The most important objective of our work now is designed to build
revolutionary dual power institutions in the community to counter
capitalist state power and begin to constitute an infrastructure for
Anarchism and freedom. Whether we call it a "workers council", "peoples'
assembly", "community-economic workshop or other neighborhood
self-governing structure, these local institutions could unite into
national and international federations to destroy capitalism and the
institution of the nation-state. The local groups would be autonomous, but
united in free association on a larger scale. This idea of the self
sufficient "eco-city" and the bioregional federation is no pipe dream of
mine; many are starting to realize that it can be built under today's
conditions. In fact, I believe that we must start building a commune now
which exists in the belly of the living capitalist beast, that covers the
U.S., Northern and Latin America, and stretches to fit the rest of the
world. This intercommunalism is the way forward.
So, where do we start? I think we should begin now in a realistic way in
our own communities to break out of the Anarchist ghetto, and establish a
social revolutionary movement which cannot be ignored and cannot be
resisted. A movement which can become a real force in people's lives. Let
us make it happen. Please join the Anti-Authoritarian Network of Community
Organizers, and help us build the Poor Peoples' Survival Network. If you or
your organization would be interested in working with us, please send $10
for an individual membership or $20 for an organization to the address
listed below.
I think it is important that I maintain as high a profile as possible in
order to push the more militant politics, and to serve as a pole of
attraction for those who want to engage in a more serious effort than the
Anarchist youth counter-cultural "Punk" scene. So I also intend to continue
my speaking tour in 1994-95, in order to make new contacts with those
Anarchists/anti-authoritarians that I have not met and also to spread the
ideas of a federation of community organizers. I will be conducting a
number of workshops on anti-racist politics and community organizing, for
booking information please call the voice mail # below.
In solidarity,
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
AANCO
145 Park Drive
Decatur, GA 30030
(404) 717-4074 (voice mail)
=@= A R T I C L E S =@=
Social Control vs. Human Needs:
the Practice and Promise of RADRS
-by Richard Taylor
"the changed form and substance of law is rather like what a jailer might
do who shifted a prisoner's chains...or removed them and substituted bolts
and bars."
-Tolstoy
I. The judicial alternatives movement is seen by some as a
opportunity for individuals and communities to recover or assume a certain
degree of control over the administration of justice in their own lives.
Others have raised the criticism that it amounts to a high-tech way for the
state to exert control over citizens. I will examine the issue of social
control relating to ADR, and hope to develop the reader's ability to make
statements regarding ADR's putative liberatory potential; i.e. does ADR
enable people to manage their needs for social order independently of the
formal judicial system? Can it? If not, how might the emancipatory vision
be realized? Evidence from sociology, legal scholarship, and primatology
will be considered.
II. Joseph Scimecca, in his paper _Conflict Resolution and a
Critique of RADRS_, first chooses to define ADR in a certain narrow sense
as being "those processes which are alternatives to the formal legal or
court system, in particular, Neighborhood Justice Centers or Community
Mediation Centers." He then names a number of social control criticisms.
ADR, like formal law, is embedded in individualism. This enhances the
capacity for its use as social control by diverting attention to the
grievance of the individual and away from the critique of social
structures. ADR practitioners attribute failures of their processes to the
disputants' recalcitrance and not to any theoretical inadequacies in the
structural premise of the processes.
Also, ADR seeks to breach misunderstanding rather than redress
power imbalances, and this limits the role of third parties to conducting
discussion rather than providing insight into underlying issues. This is
tied into the question of neutrality. Where imbalances occur, a neutral
third party is necessarily an apologist for the status quo. Scimecca
remarks that the stated ideal of providing wider access to justice may have
been lost to the need to carve out institutional turf and create jobs for
professional practitioners, but has mixed feelings about this insofar as he
believes that a forty-hour training period is insufficient to practice
conflict resolution. His final critique, linked to the one on individualism
and perhaps the most important, is that ADR represents not so much an
alternative to the courts as an alternative to community organizing and to
politics itself, lacking, as it does, organic connection to communities.
Christine Harrington, in _Shadow Justice_, provides more specific
evidence of ADR's social control function. She begins her work by
discussing the modern court reform movement and its motivation. This
movement is variously known as "ADR," "informalism," or "delegalization."
She considers its motivation to be: the criticism of lower courts for
inhibiting minor offenders' access to justice and the claim that some
disputes are so complex as to require a more flexible response than that
provided by the adversarial system. Images of the state withdrawing its
supervision over minor disputes, and of local communities asserting control
over their own affairs are presented as the idealized portrait of
informalism, but she contends that the sociological evidence, particularly
the Kansas City Neighborhood Justice Center experience, shows otherwise.
The "target community" of the KCNJC, interestingly enough, is defined in
terms of a certain police jurisdiction. She remarks, "The coercion and
authority of police, prosecutors, and judges are essential elements to the
institutional existence of neighborhood justice centers."
The "alternatives" movement has transformed traditional legal
ideology (formalism) by creating a new basis for legitimacy (functionalism)
in the processing of minor disputes. The movement thus represents a change
within the mainstream ideology and not a departure from it. The effect of
this new basis for legitimacy expands the social control capacity of the
judicial system by subsuming the resources and capacities of the disputants
themselves, freeing the system to deploy resources elsewhere. Early ADR
debates between grass-roots organizers and those who were out mainly to
reform the court appear to have gone to the reformers. Discussion now
centers around issues of professionalization and certification. Harrington
quotes the Justice Department Ad Hoc committee's characterization of ADR as
a movement of "anxious professionals and unwilling participants" and
maintains that this is so because how-to issues of actually running dispute
resolution programs have taken precedence over demands for social justice.
She closes by remarking that the alternatives movement seems to have turned
away from a social- change strategy based upon legal rights and abandoned
the courts as a resource for political struggle.
Richard Hofrichter, in his _Neighborhood Justice in Capitalist
Society_, says much the same as Scimecca and Harrington in his
demonstration that ADR is social control, but distinguishes himself by
placing ADR within the context of a social control rationale. He sees ADR
as a response to the limits of the capitalist state's order- maintenance
function. Private institutions for moderating conflict and reducing tension
(families, churches, unions, etc.) are destabilized by capital's needs for
a liquid labor supply and ease of disinvestment. But capital (the social
class exercising ownership of the means of production) has at the same time
a contradictory need for politically stable and orderly communities so that
a reliable consumer/labor pool can be reproduced. Traditional forms of
order-maintenance are reaching the limits of their applicability for a
number of reasons. First, social destabilization induces a shift in the
nature of disorder to which the adversarial system is ill-constituted to
respond (family fights being a prime example from the NJC perspective) and
in which it would prefer not to involve itself. Second, destabilization
leads to greater claims by working-class citizens on court resources. Since
the courts are socialized to maintain middle- and ruling-class interests,
these working-class claims on the resource are themselves a form of
disorder, especially if a collective challenge to capital might reveal the
class bias of the law. Third, people resist forms of order-maintenance
which they recognize as alien to the community, such as direct force or
bureaucratic control. In order for the social relations of capitalism to
survive, they must be secured without the open exercise of power or
promotion of class interests. The challenge to the capitalist legal system,
given its social control contradictions, is to translate the problems of
exploitative social relations into some kind of individual pathology, ie
get people to focus on each other and not on their conditions.
This crisis, the need to legitimate social control, gives rise to a
new technique that Hofrichter calls the "informal state." Elements of this
"informal state" include: providing the appearances of everyday life,
providing people with a sense of control by actively involving them in a
process, inculcating values of cooperation rather than confrontation,
moving the normative locus of problem solving from public life to private,
and engaging in a proactive rather than reactive policy. ADR is a
development which embodies these characteristics, and is being used as a
way for the state to bypass the limitations of formal law.
Law, in the liberal tradition, is the attempt to bring objectivity
to social relations, to construct unity from competing private desires, to
juxtapose freedom and order, and enable rational, objective decisions. It
is, Zenon Bankowski claims in _An Anarchist Critique of Law Exemplified_, a
fruitless project. The rule of law is morally suspect in that it locates
the responsibility for important decisions outside the individual and gets
her to do things outside the range of decisions she is allowed to make.
This makes her into what he calls an "automatic mover," a person of
debilitated moral agency. The objective generalization of norms
(law-making) seeks to connect people by abstract contractual relations and
not through any basis in love or community. The opportunity to live in a
world where one can act out of rational feeling and not out of a priori
contractuality is important to satisfying the human moral instinct. As
Tifft and Sullivan put it in _The Struggle to be Human_, to expect law to
give meaning to the human struggle for a moral existence is to state that
the human person is superfluous. Law becomes unstable as individuals seek
to realize their true selves and exercise agency.
Since norm generalization must take place at particular instances
of legislative and judicial decision, it cannot determine all possible
outcomes and so must remain susceptible to the exercise of choice in
application of the norms. This choice is, of course, a locus of
subjectivity. The universalizing of consequences is seen by some as a means
to escape this. Much as Karl Popper describes scientific objectivity as the
internal coherency of the scientific universe, so is it held that juridical
objectivity can be attained through consequentializing rules and selecting
among alternate competing rules to ensure the internal coherency of the
legal universe. However, Popper's standard for that coherency is the
acceptance of hypotheses by the scientific community; his famous "science
is what scientists do" and the juridical theory is similarly reducible to
"law is what judges do." For the sake of coherency, the system of
generalized norms must be operated only by the professionalized few; the
so-called "rule of law" is dead-ended into the rule of men by inherent
subjectivity.
The moral necessity of subjective sovereignty and the
inauthenticity of objective authority combine to disqualify law as a
producer of real community. Bankowski suggests the embryonic egalitarian
social formations that appear in times of revolution (communes, soviets,
etc.) for the study of group settings which mitigate social harm and allow
people to lead morally authentic individual existences.
Another sort of inquiry is recommended by Frans de Waal. He has for
years studied conflict and conciliatory behavior among chimpanzees, rhesus
monkeys, stump-tailed macaques, and bonobos in social settings, and
stresses in _Peacemaking Among Primates_ that no similar observations have
been collected on human conflict. The chief lesson drawn from his work is
that primates regularly make up after they have fought. Chimpanzee females
knowingly act to mediate male-male conflicts and bring adversaries
together. These creatures also appear to understand the principle of the
collective lie and use it to create compromise situations which avoid
defining winners and losers. Aggression has such a long evolutionary
history that one must expect such coevolved countervailing and buffering
social mechanisms to accompany it.
Human society is structured by this dialectic between aggression
and affiliation; social differentiation, role division, and cooperation are
its syntheses. Differentiation leads to the possibility for disunity, and
the oldest and most widespread method primates have for maintaining social
cohesion is, of course, hierarchy. Unity and equality are hard to mix in a
social formation, but some creatures do resolve conflict and tension in
egalitarian ways. Bonobos, given their long hair, nearly upright gait,
face-to-face mating posture, and other features, are thought by many to
bear a close relationship to humans. Bonobo females maintain a unified
intra-female social order without resorting to a rank structure. Their
intense homosexual contacts have been implicated as a possible mechanism
(cf. "Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice" from recent human
history.) Such examples suggest avenues for exploring the principles of
unification without subordination.
The sociobiological raw material for peacemaking appears to be the
same for all five species discussed. The extent and manner of its
exploitation may be accounted for by developmental and speciocultural
differences. Scientific generalizations about this raw material's
manifestation in humans, unfortunately, are lacking. de Waal cites two
factors hindering the realization of human conflict-resolution potential.
One is that people become self-conscious and attempt to modify their
behavior when it is being recorded. New methodologies for making
controllable observations are needed. The second is that most conflict
research has the agenda of finding ways to stamp out aggression rather than
finding ways to canalize or integrate it into life. Just as animals are not
slaves to instinct, humans are not automatons of reason; so, reconciliation
should not be viewed as the triumph of reason over instinct. The evolved
psychological mechanisms for peacemaking must be studied and made
accessible.
For Scimecca, ADR is not conflict resolution. In using his narrowed
definition of ADR, he is able to differentiate between alternate approaches
to conflict itself, something which both detractors and supporters of ADR
have failed to do. In seeking to elucidate a theoretical base upon which
the resolution of conflict may rest, he cites the work of the Center for
Analysis of Conflict in London which takes the premise that there are
certain universal human needs which, when unmet, form the roots of
conflict. Conflict, so it seems, will persist until these needs are
analyzed and addressed. Its research has shown them to be:
1. A need for consistency in response
2. A need for stimulation
3. A need for security
4. A need for recognition
5. A need for distributive justice
6. A need to appear rational and develop rationality
7. A need for meaningful responses
8. A need for a sense of control
9. A need to defend one's role
He points out ADR's lack of any theoretical understanding of conflict.
This, indeed, is why it is called "dispute resolution" rather than conflict
resolution. The justification for its use stems from the legal tradition
and not from a human-needs perspective.
III. Quotation is a linguistic device for showing that a thing exists in
a world apart from the reality of its textual surroundings, and this is why
I have followed Scimecca's lead in writing "ADR." The term "alternative"
makes sense only within the purview of the state, since the state holds a
monopoly on the legitimation of what conflict is and how it is handled.
Labelling a thing as "alternative" instead of framing it in its own
positive terms is a containment strategy, a way of linguistically
encapsulating potentially oppositional thought and leaving it stranded in
the mainstream. Scimecca all but spells this out when he describes the
range of practices referred to as ADR by the Ad Hoc committee, and this is
what prompts him to offer his own definition. The definition itself does
not quite go to the heart of the social-control question, because it does
not consider what social control is, how it is exercised, or offer a
rationale as to why ADR is preferred to more overt forms. He passes up the
opportunity to identify the state as the ultimate agent of social control,
sparing that criticism perhaps out of his regard for the trained
professional intervenor. His reservations on professionalism clash both
with his own critique on individualism and with the capacity for mediation
evidenced by primate nonprofessionals. But Scimecca's definition does what
he says it does. It allows him to critique ADR in a way that serves as a
springboard for presenting needs-based conflict resolution, and this is his
greatest contribution.
Harrington plays a familiar role as the good little liberal trying
to make the best of a bad system by working for change within it. She seems
to view ADR as a good idea gone awry, and neglects to explore the dynamics
that necessitate this "informalism." There is certainly room for her to be
more inquisitive; has the alternatives movement "turned away" from
political struggle, or has the state turned it away? It is not clear how
she would like to see the situation rectified, but she appears to favor a
politicization of legal activity on behalf of lower-income people. Perhaps
this would not be a bad development. Placing cogent, class-based demands on
the judicial resource could serve to stress the system further and clarify
its contradictions.
For Hofrichter, of course, ADR is itself a contradiction in that
its forms seem autonomous but must remain beholden to the legitimating
sufferance of the state. It is unclear to what extent Hofrichter is
critical of the state qua state, or sympathetic to true autonomy for
social- ordering tasks. He makes it clear, though, that capital is in an
awkward position with ADR, as it might contain the seeds of a credible
threat to the legitimacy of its use as social control.
Law and the state obviously predate capitalism by a few centuries,
so their features are not always imputable from capitalist economics.
Capital restructures or subsumes features of both as it encounters the
need. The law, we are told, is an objective means whereby individuals can
resolve their disputes, and this idea is still prevalent and valid in the
minds of most people. Capital, on the other hand, needs the
order-maintenance capacity of the state and its legal apparatus to protect
itself from the reality of the unstable economic environment that it
creates. Role differentiation (formalism/functionalism) resolves this
impasse. Subsumption is effected by relegating dispute resolution tasks to
various informal processes (labor arbitration and other ADR forms, while
not specifically discussed here, are nevertheless unifiable under this
analysis) and by consolidating the role of the courts as the means for
processing actual enemies of the state. In short, private disputes are
farmed out to non-court agencies and the court itself becomes more and more
of a cop shop.
Is that bad? A fair question. One would certainly think so, arguing
from a liberal perspective that the state's job is to help resolve problems
and not just contain them. More productively, one could view
functionalism/informalism both as an opportunity to create a basis for
community consciousness and as a chance to develop resistance-minded social
formations that could lead to more lasting change.
The anarchist critique of objective authority parallels the
primatologists' descriptions of hierarchical order-maintenance. Bankowski
does more than simply underscore the realization that instruments of the
state are ultimately instruments of the class that operates the state. He
declares that law's contractualized social order would be unacceptable even
if it could exist. The crux of the anarchist attack on law is, quite
simply, "who wants to live in a world where it doesn't matter if you are
good?" Legal linkage has an insidious implication for the integrity of
informal processes. The deprivation of the disputants' agency threatens the
original self-ordering premise and leaves personal responsibility for moral
choice unfulfilled. This raises suspicion as to the true ownership of the
agreements reached.
de Waal's evidence on the extent of peacemaking behavior in
stateless and lawless social formations does not provide us with all we
need to know, but it does effectively put the lie to the Hobbesian "war of
all against all" and serves to undermine the so-called "social contract"
which law is constantly citing as its rationale for unification through
subordination. At present, one cannot generalize intelligently about the
possibilities for human conflict resolution which might come from the type
of further study advocated by de Waal. Hopefully the emancipatory trappings
of ADR will help set a direction for truly productive inquiry.
The social-ordering practices which come forth from revolutionary,
conflict-resolution, and anthropo-primatological research will probably not
be classed as ADR. We should hope not. So long as Alternative Dispute
Resolution retains the status of a proper noun, or worse, an acronym, it
mocks the meaning of the three English words. Properly speaking, formal law
itself is an alternative. Informal practices, as presently constituted in
"ADR," not only are susceptible to the social-control criticism, but must
continue to be as long as they remain creatures of the state, as long as
they lack positive definition rooted in self-ordering autonomous
communities.
IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bankowski, Zenon
_An Anarchist Critique of Law Exemplified_
_Legality, Ideology, and the State_ Sugarman, David (ed)
London; New York: Academic Press, 1983
Harrington, Christine B.
_Shadow Justice: the Ideology and Institutionalization of Alternatives to Court_
Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1985
Hofrichter, Richard
_Neighborhood Justice in Capitalist Society: the Expansion of the Informal
State_
New York: Greenwood Press, 1987
Scimecca, Joseph
_Conflict Resolution and a Critique of RADRS_
_Crimonology as Peacemaking_ Pepinsky, Harold (ed) Bloomington, IN Indiana
University Press, 1991
Tifft, Larry and Sullivan, Dennis
_The Struggle to be Human: Crime, Crimonology, and Anarchism_
Sanday, Scotland: Cienfuegos Press, 1980
de Waal, Frans B. M.
_Peacemaking Among Primates_
Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1989 --
**BOOK REVIEWS**
Bioregionalism in the Heartland:
Still Far From Home
by Richard Taylor
About two years ago I borrowed a book called HOME!: A Bioregional
Reader. This book is a collection of articles describing a way of life that
seems sensible enough to me: living within one's means. Bioregionalism is
about the association of life with place, about sustainability through
reliance on local resources. The bioregionalist ideal is that the kind of
life people live depends on what the land provides them. As a result of
this dependency on a bounded area, people must take the well-being of other
creatures and of the land itself into account with their decisions.
Well, this all seems fair enough, so in the fall of 1991 I went to
the First Annual Ohio River Watershed Bioregional Gathering in Oldenburg,
Indiana. My comments here refer to that experience and to the subsequent
gathering which I attended in fall of 92, with some remarks on
bioregionalism in general. I have both positive and negative feelings about
what I have seen, and for purposes of this article I am going to focus on
the negative.
The gatherings were held on a farm owned by a Franciscan convent,
with a barn, some pasture, and a small wooded area in which people were to
camp. I felt disappointed when I saw that people were driving their cars
from the barn area less than a quarter-mile through the pasture to the
woods and unloading coolers and other gear. I had brought a single backpack
and although I did not hike to Oldenburg I thought the least I could do at
this sort of event was to walk a little ways to the woods. At a meeting
that evening, it was requested by staffers that people remove their cars to
the parking area by the barn, but they did not. The cars stayed in the
forest until it was time to leave Sunday morning. This scenario was
repeated at the second gathering, despite the attempted establishment of a
no-drive zone at the edge of the pasture. Literally, an example of not
walking the talk.
Another disturbing event was the "Council of All Beings" held the
first morning of the gathering. This is a practice drawn from a certain
North American native tradition wherein people form a meeting circle, then
go out into the surrounding area a little ways to find some creature or
element (like a tree, or wind for example) and try to picture themselves as
that thing and grasp its point of view on the world. Everyone then comes
back to the circle and tells of their experience as the thing. This was ok
with me until it got to the part of coming back and telling about it. Not
as if I have a hard time flexing my imagination or anything, but I think
these people took it way too seriously.
The Council of All Beings seems to be mainly a way for the group to
create a sense of fellowship through mutually declaring a certain
suspension of disbelief; sort of like declaring the body and blood of
Christ during a Eucharist. In this case though, my disbelief is in the
possibility of really swapping places with other entities. The rationale is
that these other entities have no voice and so it is necessary for humans
to embody them, but how do we know the "interpreters" aren't just playing
their own game? I had a religious studies class once where I was told a
story about a woman who "channelled the spirit" of a giant redwood tree;
the message was not to worry about saving the trees, the redwoods were
saying they would let themselves be cut down and thereby awaken human
consciousness as to the evil being done. Taking such "representation"
seriously would be as disastrous for ecological affairs as it is for civil
rights. It requires you to suppose that you are even capable of putting
yourself in the position of another being. To me this is supposing a lot,
and it probably stems from the familiar chauvinism about the human ability
to adapt and imagine, plus environmentalism's equivalent of white guilt.
The best statements one can make about how nonhuman life experiences itself
amount to speculation-- which is not necessarily bad, except speculation
should not masquerade as experience. Pretending to get into other beings'
heads like this seems really arrogant to me. In trying to avoid being
human- centered, this Council winds up putting a human face on everything.
In the HOME! book, it says that the acid test of a bioregion is
whether its inhabitants recognize it as such and in this regard my
"bioregion", as it was presented to me, fails miserably.
A watershed is an area of land that drains (sheds its water) to a
certain river or stream. The "Ohio River Watershed Bioregion" extends from
the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi to upstate New York, south to
Tennessee and north to Wisconsin. The basic problem is that it's larger
than any of the states that it overlaps; from a perspective that human
institutions must operate on a human scale, this is intolerable.
Bioregionalists continually insist that the proper boundaries for human
activity are watersheds. Actually, land can be divided up in many ways
using many geographic constructs, but the people at the gathering did not
seem to accept that the watershed is just another such construct; for them
the watershed comes first and other talk about geography is based on it. I
see this "watershed- ism" as taking the easy way out; it's much simpler for
a small group to autocratically decide that people's experience of the land
should be based upon some physical feature than it is to actually get
people engaged in dialogue about how they perceive the place where they
live and discuss how the land is boundaried in their consciousness. The
people I met seemed more intent on making their point by pretentiously
asking others near what river they lived. Wink wink nudge nudge.
This tendency exists at the national level also. In the 1980s,
there was a North American Bioregional Congress which was attended by
several Mexicans. The Mexicans expressed concern that the term North
American was exclusionist and applied only to the white peoples north of
the Rio Grande. Ok so the whites decided that in order to get around this,
they would change the name of the whole continent to Turtle Island. I see
this as very undemocratic in that these congress participants had no way to
gather ideas and consensus from the populations that live on the continent.
The usual bioregionalist rationale is that all the North American native
tribes share a mythology in which the continent is represented as a big
turtle. I am not convinced this is true, but even if so it raises another,
more serious issue; how do the indigenous people feel about this group of
middle-class neo-Europeans appropriating native traditions for their own
purposes?
Much of the concern and interest that I see among whites for
natives is directed more toward picking up the "fallen mantle of a great
culture" than with building bridges to actual native communities. The
culture and religion of aboriginal peoples is based on their relationship
to the land, and the most extreme and pressing issues for them right now
are treaty rights and recovery of ancestral lands, as well as things like
hazardous waste dumping and rampant alcoholism. This is where their
struggles lie, and they have little time for cultural voyeurs who would
rather just mimic their rituals. It is probably no accident that the native
people are very scarce at these sorts of gatherings.
Bioregionalism's spirituality strongly resembles its geopolitics.
The root of the word religion is lig, which means -to bind- ; a religion is
a set of beliefs that binds a community of people together and affirms
their common interests and heritage. Work in anthropology seems to show
that the religious or spiritual life of a society is modeled on the social
relationships that exist in that society. Spirituality, then, can be seen
as something coming forth from community. But bioregionalism tries to
contrive a spiritual tradition first and hopes that community will follow.
This is no surprise, having noted some of its autocratic sentiments, and it
is no wonder that an exercise like the Council of All Beings feels as
artificial as it does. Bioregionalist spirituality is described as
"earth-centered", but it comes off like an earth-spirit theocracy with no
room for atheists.
Even the bioregionalist "movement" as such seems to have grown in
kind of a top-down way; initially there were national congresses, and only
more lately have there been regional or local gatherings. This has resulted
in far-flung policy statements that have little popular input and which do
not address the needs of individual regions. To me this goes against the
original idea of decentralized communities forming larger levels of
organization through voluntary association, but that is certainly not
unique to bioregionalism. Nobody likes to feel lonely, and it has always
been easier for a marginal group to identify with a paper tiger at the
national level than to do something tangible in its locale.
On the last day of the gathering, some people from Indianapolis
drove down to Oldenburg for the morning circle. On the way, they had seen a
box turtle crossing the road and had picked it up and brought it to the
gathering, three counties away from where they found it. They placed it in
the center of the circle where it sat and cowered in its shell. People
began saying things about the turtle, of which I forget the words, but the
general theme was that we should all try to identify with this turtle as it
represented the earth spirit or something like that. It must have been a
field day for people who claim they live on something called Turtle Island.
Box turtles are those little orange-and-black critters with the
hinged bottom plate on the shell, and I know a couple things about them.
Don't try to eat one unless you would starve otherwise; they can eat toxic
mushrooms and store enough toxin in their tissues to nail you later. I've
also read they don't taste that great anyway...
But the other thing is, they are territorial and don't like to be
whisked miles from their home ranges by narcissistic humans. I don't know
what became of the poor animal, but it was wrong to seize it and force it
into a role like they did. This episode nearly provoked me to get up and
leave the gathering forthwith. It was pure paternalism, manifested as
disrespect, and it heavily colors my feelings towards the people in the
midwest who are "into bioregionalism".
This review is drawn mainly from what I have seen of midwestern
bioregionalism in action, and does not amount to a blanket indictment of
all principles described by bioregionalists. Some of the principles have
sense in them, and should be worked out into practice. The tendencies I
have described are those either unworkable or at variance with
bioregionalist precepts in the first place. They need to be confronted.
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