“We’re building a mass movement!” I heard Jason shouting as we were being dragged off some bridge in London. That happened years ago, around the time of Twyford Down. It was the first I’d heard of the mass movement thing. My first thought was “No, we’re getting dragged off a bridge by the cops!” How wrong I was. Looking back, it seems we were building a mass movement, though many of us had not the slightest intention of doing so. But now it seems we have such a movement, and it expresses itself through such organizations as Globalize Resistance (GR).
No Analysis
It’s not the intention of this article to go much into who is behind it all, such as the SWP; that has been well covered el... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The world’s first explicitly anarchist-feminist group was created as part of the thriving nineteenth-century Anarchist movement in Argentina. It produced the first anarcha-feminist newspaper, La Voz de la Mujer. Sadly, the history of anarchist-feminism in Argentina has rarely been acknowledged, at best mentioned in passing, at worse ignored or forgotten.
La Voz de la Mujer was published in Buenos Aires only nine times, beginning on January 8, 1896 and ending almost exactly one year later on New Year’s Day. Its donors included “Women Avengers Group,” “One Who Wants to Fill a Cannon with the Heads of the Bourgeois,” “Long Live Dynamite,” “Long Live Free Love,” “A Feminis... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Once, flipping through a book on child psychology, I came across a chapter about adolescent rebellion. It suggested that in the first phase of a child’s youthful rebellion against her parents, she may attempt to distinguish herself from them by accusing them of not living up to their own values. For example, if they taught her that kindness and consideration are important, she will accuse them of not being compassionate enough. In this case the child has not yet defined herself or her own values; she still accepts the values and ideas that her parents passed on to her, and she is only able to assert her identity inside of that framework. It is only later, when she questions the very beliefs and morals that were presented to her as gos... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
This writing is dedicated to my dear friend Miles “Art Phenix” and also to the memory of:
15-year-old Italian individualist anarchist Anteo Zamboni, who lost his life attempting to shoot and kill Benito Mussolini in Bologna on 31 October1926
& Japanese anarchist and nihilist Fumiko Kaneko, convicted of plotting to assassinate members of the Japanese Imperial family and imprisoned until she took her own life.
The sun, moon and the stars do not wait; they bomb the sky with their presence. A tsunami does not hesitate; it announces a death rattle of destruction before dissipating. So why should I wait? And who am I waiting for? And who are they waiting for? The Future is a god obeyed at the expense of one’s immediate de... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Even a government wanting to solve global warming can be defeated by the economic power of capitalists intent on protecting their own profits. Only through workplace organizing and direct action can this power be removed. And only a federation of workplace and community councils can plan and implement a path to a sustainable future, in Australia and for the planet as a whole. We’re talking about a workers’ revolution, because nothing else will work.
The Copenhagen Conference has failed. Beneath a mass of lies, excuses and buck-passing, the reality is clearly visible. The United Nations Conference, which was supposed to produce a binding international treaty to stop dangerous global warming, has resulted in no such thing. Instea... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
If you liked school, you’ll love work. The cruel, absurd abuses of power, the self-satisfied authority that the teachers and principals lorded over you, the intimidation and ridicule of your classmates don’t end at graduation. Those things are all present in the adult world, only more so. If you thought you lacked freedom before, wait until you have to answer to shift leaders, managers, owners, landlords, creditors, tax collectors, city councils, draft boards, law courts, and police. When you get out of school you may escape the jurisdiction of some authorities, but you enter the control of even more domineering ones. Do you enjoy being controlled by others who don’t understand or care about your wants and needs? Do you ge... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
It’s an acknowledged fact that France is invaded by cockroaches.
Wherever you might go, in no matter what region you travel, you will see nothing but convents, churches, and monasteries everywhere.
Cloistered or non-cloistered, the cockroaches swarm.
This race of insects is everywhere. It’s slowly pursuing its labor of absorption of the soil. If we don’t watch out, if we don’t decide to use a special insecticide against them they will soon be the masters of France.
Universal suffrage would then rise up in indignation in vain. It will be too late. The right to vote will be crushed by the right to property.
Beware of this progressive invasion and take the appropriate measures.
In the first place, instruct the peo... (From: Marxists.org.)
From abusers, clout chasers, careerists, and grifters to people getting thrust into a dangerous visibility, dehumanized, and overworked, the role of ‘organizer’ is detrimental both to the people who claim it/it’s thrust upon as well as the movement for liberation as a whole.
Freedom doesn’t need organizers, it needs everyone to take an active role in the fight and to refuse to put eachother on dehumanizing pedestals in the process.
We can’t wait for others to fight for our freedom. As always, the secret is to begin.
Specialization and Spectatorship
The role of ‘organizer’ is a specialized position, that is it
is never something someone can just do but only a
certain kind of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
An earlier version of this narrative appeared in the first issue of Rolling Thunder: An Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. It has become more poignant with the passing of time: what if anarchists and others had somehow succeeded in making the invasion and occupation of Iraq impossible? Perhaps the Islamic State would not have come to power, and the Syrian uprising could have turned out differently. What if anarchists had been more successful in opposing Obama, so Trump could not have presented himself as the only alternative? What horrors loom ahead in this next administration—and what would it take to forestall them?
January 20, 2005, Washington, DC. The second inauguration of George W. Bush.
The riot police were already pouri... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
As we go to press, the US Presidential election is fast approaching. Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, is further ahead in the polls than Hillary Clinton was four years ago and his lead is pretty stable. Trump can only win by either a massive last-minute shift in opinion or by undemocratic means. These could include the Electoral College, semi-legal methods of voter suppression or an outright illegal refusal to count postal votes. So many conventions of US politics have been broken in recent years that we hesitate to rule out any scenario as impossible. There is even discussion about whether Trump would be prepared to recognize an election in which he was defeated.
With our limited resources, picking a winner would be a mug’s game... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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