David Van Deusen, pictured front right (along with union transportation workers & supporters) marched in his first Black Bloc against Bill Clinton & the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. He was an all-section wrester in his youth, played bass in the U.S. Condemned, and later trained in boxing and karate. Van Deusen co-founded the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective in 2000 and is a former member of Anti-Racist Action. He is a District Vise President and past Member-At-Large of the Vermont AFL-CIO, served on the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, and as Conservation Organizer for the Vermont Sierra Club. David is a member of AFSCME Local 2413 and is also a past member of the United Auto Workers Local 1981, Teamsters Local 1L, and United Electrical Workers Local 221. He authored On Anarchism: Dispatches From The Peoples’ Republic of Vermont, and coauthored The Black Bloc Papers & Neither Washington Nor Stowe. In addition, he was elected to two terms on his local Select Board (endorsed by the VT Progressive Party, VT Liberty Union Party & the AFL-CIO), three terms as First Constable, and as Moretown Chair of the [social-democratic] Vermont Progressive Party Caucus. Van Deusen (who has traveled as far west as California, as for east as Budapest Hungary, as far north as Quebec City, and as far south as Chiapas Mexico) has labored as a construction worker, farmhand, bartender, archaeologist, freelance journalist, and as News Editor of Catamount Tavern News. He is presently a Union Rep for AFSCME and a former Senior Union Rep for the Vermont State Employes’ Association (representing road crew workers). Van Deusen is a member of the Vermont Workers’ Center, and lives with his family (wife Angela, daughter Freya, & son William) in rural Vermont (splitting his time between an off-grid log cabin in the mountains & in a northern village). Van Deusen, who has also resided in New Orleans Louisiana (birthplace of jazz), Jacksonville Florida (birthplace of Lynyrd Skynyrd), West Nyack New York, & Seville Spain, rides a Union made Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Author’s Note

On These Collected Essays

This book is a collection of essays I have written over the past two+ decades. A discerning reader will note that some of my more foundational essays such as Black Bloc Tactics Communique, and Neither Washington Nor Stowe (along with dozens of others) do not appear here. These essays (some of which were coauthored with the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective) were (in my opinion) central to the political themes I have written about (and been engaged in) over the years (especially from 1999-2007). Their absence is due to the fact that they have been brought together in the book On Anarchism: Dispatches From The Peoples Republic of Vermont (Algora Publishing, NYC, 2017). What is contained here are those essays that were excluded from that collection (along with some which have been written after its publication). Even so, I trust that some of the words put on page here will be of interest to the reader and to history.

-David Van Deusen, November 5, 2017