On a related note, don’t miss Ben Metcalf’s deviously satirical piece at Harper’s: Why I Pay My Taxes. Also, there’s an article in the current issue of the Brooklyn Rail called Paying for War that provides some sympathetic coverage of our group.

In three parts:

(1) Melanie Morgan, from the esteemed Move America Forward, thinks she has solved the mystery of the Times Square recruiting station bombing that has so far eluded FBI investigators (the very same ones who have visited several of my friends at WRL, SDS, and PMR). Her answer: Why, it must have been the oldest secular pacifist organization in the nation, the War Resisters League! Her baseless accusations have spawned some rather entertaining hate mail directed our way (which, hilariously enough, was CC’d to several email addresses at Fox News — they must be so proud!):

Subject: To the Disgusting Cowards Who Attack Military Recruiting Stations

To the war criminals at the NYCWRL,

Your actions speak volumes about the cowards you are.

Legislation is being formed right now to treat you all as war criminals and send you to Gitmo where you belong, indefinitely. It won’t be long before you get your one way ticket to Cuba.

Where did you pathetic people come from, and who raised you miserable poor excuses for humans? From a practical point of view, I’ve never seen such moronic, twisted, and demented behavior. Ultimately, your only danger is to yourselves. Believe it!!!

Where to begin? I’m certainly curious about this new legislation he’s referring to. But it’s better not to feed the trolls, I guess — even though it’s heartening to me that some in our group actually wanted to send a thoughtful reply to this person, despite the fact that he not only makes no attempt to appeal to rational thought, but also considers us to be pathetic, moronic, twisted, and demented war criminal cowards who belong in Gitmo, indefinitely.

(2) On a more cultural note, I actually went to see a movie — Chicago 10. It’s a creative retelling of the Chicago 7 (which is actually the Chicago 8, but which the movie refers to as the Chicago 10 in order to include the trial’s lawyers), combining animation and documentary footage to recreate the events surrounding the protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the subsequent trial of several principal agitators (including, most notably perhaps, Abbie Hoffman). The film is pretty good, although it might be better as a rental. The voice actors are nothing less than an all-star cast, including Roy Scheider, Jeffrey Wright, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, and Liev Schreiber.

The animated recreation of the trial is entertaining and often hilarious, but the real power of the film lies in the documentary footage of the protests and rallies. It’s useful — or, more accurately, extremely depressing — to compare the anti-war movement of that summer to the one we have today. Theirs was more tied into the youth culture, and much more anarchistic (well, the yippees at least: I was struck by how many times I heard someone from the 7 disavow any kind of leadership role for the movement). I kept thinking — now that’s the kind of rally I want to be at, not these boring-ass ones we have today.

Of course, it took a damn near perfect storm of events to create the widespread radicalization of the cultural moment of that time — a hugely unpopular war, the advancement of the civil rights movement, multiple assassinations within a relatively short period of time, and the concurrent emergence of a genuinely anti-establishment counterculture. The national character of the anti-war movement today seems lifeless, stale, and conservative by comparison.

(3) Finally, I actually made it to the Met to see the excellent exhibition of Courbet paintings. Most of his major works were there, excepting a few that are unable to travel due to their condition. One of my favorites is his funky portrait of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon — I wonder, is this the most famous work of art ever made about an anarchist? The only other moderately famous one I can think of is Ben Shahn’s painting of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Also of special note was a room that I lovingly refer to as The Porn Room: Courbet’s renderings of female nudes, lesbian lovers, and of course, The Origin of the World. It’s amusing to watch families of tourists, who no doubt would find such content horribly offensive in a different context, closely inspect the “paint quality” or “brush strokes” as they lean their faces to within inches of a vagina painting.

And speaking of FBI agents, the highlight of our afternoon, by far, was the coolest celebrity-spotting I’ve experienced in my 6 years of living here in NYC. We were amazed to discover that our appreciation of Courbet’s talents on that day were being simultaneously enjoyed by Twin Peak’s special agent Dale Cooper, otherwise known as Kyle MacLachlan. He was plainly dressed and wore an exhibition headset, but appeared to be enjoying himself immensely.

I spent most of last weekend in jail. It was easily the most important thing I’ve done in my life so far.

As part of the group Witness Against Torture, and in solidarity with numerous groups performing similar acts around the world on that day, thirty-seven of us marched up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods to protest the torture and indefinite detainment of the captives at Guantanamo prison.

Another forty-five of us waited inside the Court, disguised as tourists, until the opportune moment arrived to spring into action with our outrage, our protest songs, and our demands for justice. The Supreme Court was evacuated and then closed for several hours. We were detained, processed, and held in jail until the following afternoon. Each of us used the name of a Guantanamo prisoner, refusing to reveal our true identities until the final moment of our release, because we were determined to get these names into the U.S. court system ourselves.

Our action was timed to coincide with the six-year anniversary since the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, where there are now nearly 300 persons still imprisoned. The United States government, under the direction of President Bush, officially considers them to be unlawful combatants, and therefore unworthy of humane treatment. They face brutal living conditions and brutal treatment by their American captors, and are being held without any charges filed against them and without any access to legal recourse.

All of this is well-known, and yet it continues. While such injustices are abhorrent wherever they occur, it became increasingly important to me that these crimes at Guantanamo are not only carried out by Americans, but are funded by American taxpayers. This includes me (though not for long!). So while it may be everyone’s responsibility to act against torture and unlawful imprisonment, I felt that as an American I bear a direct culpability, and an even more urgent responsibility to act.

But turning words, and an increasing sense of personal responsibility, into action has not been easy for me. I don’t come from a family of activists, and I’d never been arrested before. In fact, my family has always attempted to be so apolitical that I’m not sure if any of them have ever even voted for President. And while I have little doubt that each of my closest friends would gladly denounce the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo as repugnant and shameful, I didn’t personally know anyone who had ever tried to do anything about it.

I’m still trying to figure out why that is. Is it that my generation is too afraid to stand up to the government? Are we out of ideas? Or, is it that my generation is too self-consciously cool and ironic to do something as sincere as putting one’s own freedom on the line for the justice and freedom of another? I struggled with this myself.

There is a feeling of inevitably among many people I know – that the world and its problems are too big for us, and that there’s no way to stop what has been set in motion, whether it be the war in Iraq, or the environmental destruction of our planet. One of my friends summed it up best when he recently told me, “You know, I basically feel the same way you do about everything, the only difference being that I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it.”

And who can blame him? It seems like an eternity now since a majority of Americans became opposed to the continuation of the war in Iraq, and yet it continues with no end in sight. We are told over and over that we live in a democratic society, the greatest in the world, and yet we are so easily ignored, time and again. How is it that our individual financial resources are so easily used for purposes that we find abhorrent? How is it that our government is able to force us, against our will, to support torture, indefinite detainment, foreign invasion and occupation?

From a young age we are told to equate democracy with voting. We are told that we have the opportunity to participate in our government only once a year, on election day, when we cast a vote for our representative leaders. But last weekend, by acting against the will of my government, and in disobeying its laws that attempt to curb our freedom and demands for justice, I experienced, first hand, the true nature and power of democracy.

Democracy is not about voting, democracy is about acting. Democracy is not about waiting for representative leaders to act; it’s about taking direct action ourselves, often in opposition to the will of such leaders.

Last weekend, we failed to close Guantanamo and end torture. At best, I can only hope that the actions of our group, and those of the other groups acting in similar fashion around the globe, may have aided in some small way towards eventually alleviating the pain and suffering of those unjustly abused at Guantanamo.

But sitting in jail, and experiencing the unjust criminal process first hand – one that willingly punishes those opposing injustice – I got a glimpse of something. They’re scared of us. They’re terrified of us disobeying en masse. The DC Metropolitan jail system was practically bursting at the seams with a mere eighty extra occupants. What will they do with a thousand? What about ten thousand? How will they ignore us then?

As long as we limit our dissent to permitted demonstrations and confine our protests and outrage to the confines of the metal barriers set up for us, then our unjust government has little to fear. As long as we limit our political participation to the electoral process, they point to us as a glowing endorsement of democracy, a sign that all is well and just in democratic, free America.

But when we disobey, they tremble. We must stop the war in Iraq ourselves. We must shut down Guantanamo ourselves. We have waited patiently for too long. We may have failed to close Guantanamo this time, but we’ll be back, and next time we’ll bring larger numbers. The world is waiting.

// Top photo is from the Associated Press (I’m in the bottom row, second from the right; they were rather slow to arrest us because of the simultaneous action going on inside the Court). For more info about the action, including photos and links to media coverage, visit the Witness Against Torture website.

There are a group of students at Columbia University that are participating in a hunger strike. They are pissed off about the ongoing problem of racism there, as reflected in recent symbolic attacks directed towards faculty (nooses and swastikas), an ethnocentric curriculum, and the university’s planned expansion into Harlem (which would displace thousands). From their online petition, where I’ve added my name in solidarity with their efforts:

We demand a Core Curriculum that is inclusive not only of the canon of Western European thought, but that seeks to build a deep understanding of the multicultural society that we live in and the power relations that constitute it.

We demand a sustainable expansion that does not displace 5,000 people and bulldoze a neighborhood in Harlem, one of the most important communities in the United States.

We demand an administration that is responsive to institutional racism, supports its students, and proactively works to create a climate in which nooses and swastikas are not the order of the day.

We demand support and autonomy for the Ethnic Studies program, which is crucial to a critical intellectual experience in a progressive university.

We are concerned for both the well-being of the strikers and the campus community, which has been so starved by the indifference of the administration. We express our solidarity with the hunger strikers and urge the university administration to fulfill these demands as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

You can keep updated on all things Hunger Strike at their informative blog. Also, a curious political art installation popped up on the Columbia campus yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s explicitly associated with the hunger strike, but it’s one of the more thoughtful and provocative pieces I’ve seen there.

The piece appeared to be a contemplation on Mexican immigration into the U.S., especially highlighting the horrible conditions that Mexican workers face both in their native country, and as illegal workers here. There were [maybe a hundred or more?] newspapered headstones attached to the chained borders around the grassy areas in the quad, each containing a fact or story about Mexican immigrants. To my knowledge it was only up for a day. I snapped some hurried pics as my camera battery died:

>> UPDATE: Ok, geesh, I just noticed that the bottom picture mentions a town in El Salvador, so the installation was obviously about more than just Mexican immigrants.

There’s some badass war resistance going on in Olympia, Washington. More people are beginning to figure out that if we want to stop this war, we’re going to have to do it ourselves, because it’s increasingly obvious that the Democrats in Congress have no intention of doing so. This means we must directly interfere in the war process by any means available to us — whether war tax resistance, counterrecruitment, or as these fine folks are doing, blockading militarized ports. Unfortunately, violent reprisals by hired thugs (err . . . police officers) are a very real consequence of such actions, and activists who are willing to put their safety on the line are to be applauded for their courage (because they’re awesome!). From Next Left Notes:

Wednesday night over 150 people gathered at the Port of Olympia to demonstrate against the militarization of the port. Demonstrators, both members of PMR (Port Militarization Resistance) and others, decided to block the convoys. People sat down in lines to block convoys leaving the port and cops came in to push them back and assault them. The next several hours saw similar displays of civil resistance. More cops came onto the scene. More convoys left the port, running into resistance on many streets. Several people came close to getting run over by Stryker vehicles that were traveling at high speed. Small barricades went up as well and a number of people defended themselves and their community from the cops by pushing them back. People were chased by cops and in return cops made fools of themselves by tripping over their own feet, falling down and being too out of shape to run after and catch up with the evasive resisters.

Sinn Steiner of Olympia SDS was arrested earlier in the night and a few people were detained. Olympia SDSer Emiliano Guevara was clubbed in the face by cops, causing his lip to split open….

What was amazing about the night was the level of resistance displayed. Never before, in the port actions in Olympia, Tacoma and Aberdeen, have people displayed these levels of resistance, adapting quickly to changing situations and fighting back. There was something beautiful that happened Wednesday night. Liberals, radicals and everyone in between were working together. They were on the same page and because of this they were able to act in the manner they did. It was a true expression – no, a true act of solidarity….

You can read the whole report at Next Left Notes. The above picture is taken from Robert Whitlock’s Flickr page, at which there’s a large photoset documenting the event.

More excellence from The Indypendent. An interview with Stephen Duncombe, by Sam Alcoff (from the September 4, 2007 issue). Alcoff’s analysis is of particular interest to me because, among other things, it highlights why it’s so important that artists and activists work together (especially groups like the Rude Mechanical Orchestra or the Rebel Clown Army, that combine art and activism):

Stephen Duncombe’s academic pedigree may have landed him a professorship at NYU’s Gallatin school, but his activist credentials burn deep through several decades of hell-raising across the Lower East Side. His new book, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, taps both of those worlds to propose some new ways for today’s activists to win some old battles. Duncombe sat down with The Indypendent to talk about the make-believe aspects of building a new world in the shell of the old, the politics of flash and personality and why he likes Vegas.

SA: The first thing you say in Dream is that politics can be fun. SD: If you want people to become activists, you have to give them something. You can give them a sense of purpose. You can give them a sense of being a better person. And those are important, but I also think that you can’t neglect fun. Our society is about pleasure; even if you look at counter culture, it’s about pleasure, and to separate politics out from that makes no sense. I’ve been an activist since I was 17 years old, and often what was expected of me was a sacrifice of my life – a sacrifice of fun. We’re essentially just creating a culture of the left that is radically divergent from how most people want to spend their lives. SA: In the book, you tie this to the idea of the spectacle. SD: I think spectacles are about extravagant emotion, dreams on display or dreams performed, and that really is something we have to address and embrace, because spectacles are the lingua franca of our society today. It’s how we do entertainment, how we do religion and it’s how we do politics. On the left we look at these things as things to be condemned. But to condemn it or ignore it means deeding over powerful territory to the other side. What we have to do is take spectacle seriously, and then rethink it, re-imagine it and refigure it. The left has done this in different times. Look at the New Deal, the French Revolution, the civil rights movement: these are folks who took spectacle seriously, but they attempted to do it differently.The four areas [of spectacle] that I looked at were architecture of Las Vegas, celebrity culture, advertising, and video games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I picked these for two reasons. One, they are incredibly popular. Las Vegas, despite the fact that gambling has been de facto legalized throughout the United States, is more popular than it has ever been. I also picked four sites that liberals hate. It’s okay to hate these things. Grand Theft Auto is apocalyptically violent. It’s misogynistic. It is, you know, horrifying, yet it is also fun to play. So what I’m trying to figure out is that we can condemn these things, but we can also understand them, and ask what in them can be redeemed. There is an essay that has stuck with me. I remember reading it when I was 18 and I went to a War Resisters meeting in San Franciso, we had herb tea and sat on the floor. It was William James’ “A Moral Equivalent to War.” James’s point was simple. Speaking to a group of pacifists, he said, “If we keep addressing pacifism by saying ‘war is bad, peace is good,’ we’re not going to get anyplace with any people except for people who already agree with us. What we have to figure out it is why people go to war.” And he says “look, whether we like it or not, war serves the purposes of honor, sacrifice. Of patriotism, and so on and these things are good qualities; what we have to do is figure out a pacifist equivalent that can actually allow people to feel honor, allow people to feel sacrifice about giving for the all, allow people to feel patriotism, but not in a way that kills other people or gets people killed.” And then says “Once you acknowledge that, then you can move the point towards your own politics.” And that stuck with me. Instead of condemning popular culture, we have to ask what in it can we speak to? Those elements we can speak to, we need to acknowledge, and create the progressive political equivalent for what people are now finding pleasure in in mass culture. The Situationists…who [peaked] in the May 68 protests in Paris, they understood before pretty much anybody else that social values aren’t just articulated on the shop floor. Marx was absolutely right in 1848 about the way things were happening. But in the 1950s/ 1960s, they were being reinforced and articulated in a world of spectacle. This is the terrain that we have to be fighting on. Instead of just condemning spectacles, [the Situationists] created moments in which people would enter into spectacles, yet shift the terrain, shift the point of view. One of the classic things they did was detourn films. They’d show these western films, but put in different dialogue. And it made you look at the film differently, and say “Well, what is expected of me when I go to this film as it’s supposed to be seen in a movie theater and how do I think about it now. ” We should be creating these moments that get people to question the world as it is, but give them pleasure here and now. May 1968 was a critique of the French state, but it was also a lot of fun. I mean you can’t read those slogans without realizing that there was a lot of joking going on: “Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach” and “All Power to the Imagination.” SA: This sounds like what you describe as an ethical spectacle. What are other examples of people making ethical spectacles today? SD: Before 9/11, I’d say that one of the greatest examples were the globalization protests. Think about normal protests. Now this is a spectacle of impotence. The police have essentially engineered everything for us; in fact, the protester’s job is to make it a safe environment worked out in advance with the police. The globalization protests were chaos. They were carnivals. They were street theater. They were planned by the participants, not with the police. And they were also highly effective. The shutting down of Seattle, what happened in Prague, what happened in London, and other cities around the world, were highly effective at getting attention drawn towards the World Trade Organization, GATT, NAFTA, and so on. 9/11 sort of put the kibosh on that and you saw the return of the repressed march-chant protest where we literally become spectators toward our own activity. Now you’re starting to see a breakdown of that in groups on the margins. More street theater type folks. People like Reverend Billy: complete farce, but farce you can believe in. In other words, no one really believes that Reverend Billy is a reverend, so that it’s not fantasy, yet it’s also creating community that’s fun to be a part of. Billionaires for Bush: street theater that is both funny, and entertaining. It’s fun to play to a part, yet it doesn’t fool anyone. Looking at the Iraq Veterans Against the War, when they did their street performances on the streets of Washington, New York, and Chicago as well, interrogating civilians, getting under sniper fire, carrying one of their comrades out. It entered people into a landscape which our country has been so effective at blotting out. That is a way to actually talk to the American people: these are our heroes and look what we are forcing our heroes to do. I think that that is an ethical spectacle as well. SA: You criticize prefigurative politics, but what is the relationship between ethical spectacle and political campaigns that are about contesting for power. SD: First, we should talk about this movement towards the march. That is a fetishization of spectacle. It was a good spectacle in 1963, 64, but it is a bad spectacle at this point. It’s part of the narrative of American democracy at this point, not a challenge to the system. It is the system. When George Bush was confronted with all the millions of the protesters, he went on TV and was like “Yes, of course! Now it’s really a war!” It didn’t shake up the consensus at all. What shook up the consensus was a lot of soldiers dying, a continued civil war in Iraq, and Cindy Sheehan. Also, the problem is that these people are activists, but they’re not organizers. Doug Henwood, Liza Featherstone, and Christian Parenti wrote this neat article talking about “activistism” or something like that, when you get so jonesed up about the moment that you forget that you’re supposed to be a part of a campaign. This isn’t in the place of the campaign. It is part of a campaign. Reclaim the streets, when we were at our best, in terms of our second or third protest, was when we ingraining ourselves into pre-existing campaigns and worked with them to figure out what was needed to get another day in the news cycle as part of a overall campaign. And that just can’t be stressed. I cannot stress that enough and nor can my friend, God. This is just been a part, a tactic of an overall campaign. I have some problems with [prefigurative politics], mainly because I had to sit through those goddamn meetings that go on for hours. But I think they’re on the right track, which is that…you have to experiment with what this new world is going to be like. You’re going to fail, but it’s through those failures that you’re going to actually try and figure out what another world might be like. The last part of my book is about understanding that these dreams are just dreams and that they’re going to fail. In the prefigurative politics, we’re not going to create new societies in the old, but what we are doing is creating a setting whereby we can get glimpses of what a different world might be like. Because part of the problem of why we actually produce those boring marches over and over, is that we can’t see outside of the world we’re in now. Then we’re stuck with two paths. One is critique, which is what Marx decided. He said, I can’t understand what socialism is going to be like, so I’m going to critique capitalism. The other is radical imagination, thinking irrationally about the future. This is what the Zapatistas do, this is what Reverend Billy does, also I think it’s probably what the Khmer Rouge did, so you gotta be a little careful. It’s the idea of moving to something where we don’t know where exactly we’re going to land. And that is what fantasy and spectacle do for us all the time. It’s no accident that many many science fiction writers are political, mostly left, but then you get Robert Heimlein, who’s libertarian. Most of them are left: H.G. Wells, Asimov, and all those folks. The first science fiction fanzines in the nineteen thirties were run off from the same mimeograph as the Young Communist Flatbush Yell Out in Brooklyn. We need a lot more “what ifs.” I don’t think it’s any accident that religion has created some of the great social movements, whether they’re right wing social movements, like the Islamic Jihad, or the social movements like the civil rights movement. Or even Ghandiism in India. Because those are moments you can say “what if.” My thing is that we always have to acknowledge that those are just dreams, we can’t pretend that it’s reality. Because that leads to totalitarianism, to delusion. We have to embrace the idea of the absolute fantasy so we can always stand back and say “You know, it’s not real. But it gives us a place to walk to.” SA: Last weekend, I talked to this business major, his dad is a mechanic who has been laid off every year for six years, and he was very sympathetic very quickly to a leftist critique, but then he said something which I hear all the time: 21 year olds who say “but it’s just not possible.” The totality is so complete. His grandparents were probably alive during Jim Crow and before all the revolutions of the sixties. And then Nixon famously lost one of the presidential debates to Kennedy because he didn’t shave and he underestimated the effect his 5 0′clock shadow would have on TV. Yet today they own Fox News; the political operatives literally run the news. So I guess I’m asking for your thoughts on the totality and if the totality has somehow gotten fiercer? SD: I think that the problem with the Democrats is that they don’t listen to the margins. The Republican Party learned to listen to the margins. You had these people, beginning with Barry Goldwater, who would now seem like a moderate, but really Ronald Reagan and the crew around Ronald Reagan, but that who were were staffers of Nixon and Ford, people like Cheney who were asking what would a world be like without a welfare state, with a pre-emptive military, all of these things were off the table for a hundred years. Yes, we had a pre-emptive military, but it was always done under the cloak of darkness. Yes, there was tinkering with the welfare state, but it was a given that it was going to exist. And these guys said “No, we’re going to do away with these things.” And of course, look what’s happened, their dreams have become our reality. I think the left has to do that same sort of dreaming. I think our job on the far, far left is that we have to be the Karl Roves. Not too much in being corpulent and pig-like, but in dreaming unimaginable dreams and then convincing the center. The Republican Party learned to listen to the margins, they were so out of power. And their dreams have become our reality. The problem with the Democrats is that they have no idea what they want to dream for. They are caught within a negation. “We want to hold on to what little we have.” The problem with the far left is that we’re either at that place, or we dream in a way that we’ve sort of permanently marginalized ourselves. When we start talking about “George Bush is a fascist and the police state is coming,” that’s our fantasy. It’s a fantasy that keeps us powerless. It’s kind of fun to think that we’re so important that sooner or later that the men with the black uniforms are going to come bashing through our door. You know what, they’re not. They’re going to ignore us. In fact, Bush is not a fascist, he’s not smart enough to be a fascist. Now Giuliani, if he becomes president, that could happen, but Bush is not. He’s just a good old boy from the south with right wing advisers who wants more political power. We have to free ourselves and to start imagining. When Reverend Billy says “stop shopping,” that’s stupid, you can’t stop shopping, but he gets us thinking. It opens up the door to a world that’s not predicated around consumption and I think we have to make more of those ridiculous demands. SA: The Left that does get heard is just smeared. They went after the messenger when the messenger was someone like Martin Luther King. With people like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan, they go after the person and not after the politics. SD: I think we have a personality driven society. You are going to get smeared as a personality. My question is, “Does it work?” Cindy Sheehan wasn’t careful about her public image, and that was problematic. But when they first went after her, it backfired because they went after the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. They couldn’t get around that one truth which is that her son was dead. And it made her into an unassailable character. As she distanced herself from that then she got assailed, but I don’t think it hurt her credibility, except among the punditocracy. Actually, I think a similar thing is happening with Michael Moore. My guess is that, yes, just wrote a scathing review, and basically the New Yorker gave a scathing review of every single one of, my favorite is this, they hated every single film he’s ever done. Because why? Because he deals in emotion! Michael Moore puts himself across as a character who is not one of those high and mighty celebrities that people love to take down a notch or two. And so while the pundacracy, particularly the liberal pundacracy, hates him, he’s gotten creamed heavier by The New Yorker and CNN and the New York Times than by Fox. SA: What we have in America between the Republican and Democratic party is a system that toggles, like most repressive systems, between repression and co-optation. Even when it’s co-optation you have this strong core in the DLC that says “we have to have the Audacity of Hope out there, we have to let Dean go, Kucinich and Sharpton should be at the debates, but Hell, no, we’re not going to let them near the control room.” SD: I think we need the Democratic party because they’re the machinery of the Democratic party – not for any other reason. It’s important for the left to understand is that co-optation is inevitable – if you’re any good. If you’re not any good, they’re not even gonna bother. One of the things that I think is really interesting about [Sixties activists] Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman is that they understood that they were going to be co-opted. SDS did not. If you read Todd Gitlin’s first book, The Whole World is Watching, he talks about how when SDS became media stars it destroyed the organization. It never destroyed the Yippies because they understood from the get-go that they were going to use this and leverage this to whatever they could. The question is once we get co-opted by the Democratic Party, how do you leverage that into real power? I don’t think that we – little bands of left-wing activists with our internet pages and our little protests–are ever going to challenge the capitalist state. We need machinery. We need the machinery of labor unions, we need the machinery of the Democratic party. I’ve been an activist for more than 25 years, and I’m sick of being in a sub-culture. I’m sick of activism as a lifestyle. I want to win. I want to change the way the world operates. I want to make life better for myself, my family, and for everybody in this country and around the world. And it’s only going to happen if we acknowledge that we’ve gotta take power. Let’s talk about what it means to create alliances with labor unions that have muscle and money. What does it mean to create alliances with the Democratic party, who I think are spineless idiots who have no idea of strategy and tactics? Look, if we want to win, we’ve gotta start having these discussions. If the Democrats want to win, they’ve gotta start having these discussions with us. SA: It think that your critique of prefigurative politics [consensus, non-hierarchical organizing, etc] is right-on. But unions are largely absent from your book, which I think is interesting because I think the Left has largely written off unions. When I’ve seen prefigurative politics work in my own life it’s been watching workers engage in strikes win and organizing campaigns. SD: Andrew Boyd of Billionaires for Bush gets calls from unions asking him to engineer an ethical spectacle. The organizing ranks of those unions have come through these social movements in the left. With Reclaim the Streets Lower East Side collective – people always said you guys [RTS] are foolish, you guys are idiots, you guys are going to alienate the working people. And inevitably, when I give a talk on this, someone will raise their hand and say, “But will the spectacle work with people in the middle of the country?” And I’m like, “The only place the spectacle doesn’t work is the UWS, as far as I can figure.” When RTS approached this union, we said…Are they going to let us run with our weird carnivalesque stuff? And they were great: “Let’s have a big wrestling match!” And it turned out that the main organizer from the Mexican-American workers’ organization, who was also the lead organizer in Unite 169, was a gymnast, and so he did these backflips into the ring! There’s so much space within unions to do this sort of work. Because their rank and file are regular people. And regular people like watching wrestling. They like going to Las Vegas. They like watching TV. Just like we should learn how to do. And they also understand that just because you watch E! Entertainment network at night doesn’t mean you can’t also go on strike against a media conglomerate. Once you start talking about public image –- that is, that going on strike at a plant in Mississippi doesn’t mean jack shit, but making an embarrassment for a corporate parent in New York City in front of their stockholders means a lot, that opens up the terrain for spectacle for sure. SA: One of the things that makes me nervous is that the models you mention, the Situationists, the Yippies, all of these things have exploded. At the end of the day, what was attained and what have they changed? SD: We might’ve lost the political war, but we won the cultural war, and if you see right wing talk shows and list servs, they understand how much we won. Yes, it was made into profits, boutiques, the newest sitcoms, but we basically won in terms of personal expression, freedom of expression, partly because it was no challenge to capitalism. The second thing is that it exploded as a political movement, I would argue because they weren’t embedded within political movements. That what Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin should’ve done, is met with the folks from SDS and said, “okay, look, we’ve got the spectacle, you’ve got the organization. How would we want to work with these things together?” The Situationists split every five years, purging each other. They weren’t interested in building a movement. I think we have to be smarter. The battle is to be fought on the terrain of the spectacle. There’s no doubt in my mind. But it has to also have its root in institutional structures, because the problem with the spectacle is that it disappears. We saw this in things like the globalization movement. We were very effective in actually pulling off demonstrations, but when we started saying, “Another world is possible,” we had no destination. We also had no machinery to get it going there. So we have to make peace with the Democratic party, and we’ve got to make real efforts with unions. SA: It’s been eight years since Seattle, six years since 9/11, and we’re sort of coming out of that at some level. Very explicitly, what do you think people should be doing? SD: They should be thinking about crafting a politics that appeals to desire and articulates dreams as much as speaks to the mind. I think that’s absolutely essential. I don’t think that these run counter to one another, you don’t have to just have fantasies and do away with reason and rationality. We really have to build a politics that speaks to the entirety of people’s experience: their fantasies, their passions, their desires. It should speak to today, and today is a society of the spectacle. Until we’re good at doing spectacle and we figure out how to make spectacle our own, we will continue to lose.

The first day (Saturday) of Operation No Recruits was a huge success. We ended the war for real this time! Well, ok, not really, but at least we managed to shut down one of the most active recruiting stations in the nation for a day. I guess I shouldn’t really say we–my lazy ass didn’t show up until the afternoon, when most of the heavy lifting was already done (a full report is here, with pics and videos of the beginning of the day). Unlike many actions around the city, we didn’t ask the police for their permission to protest, so 3 activists were arrested in the early morning until the police finally gave in and the recruiters closed-up shop and went home.

Luckily, I didn’t miss another fine performance by the folks that I have officially decided are the Baddest. Motherfuckers. On. Earth. You may know them as the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. They instantly drew a huge crowd of onlookers and supporters (not to mention the ire of a few red-faced counter-protesters). It’s amazing how receptive people are to leaflets once treated to a kick-ass performance. Even the tourists on top of the double-decker buses were shouting along to “Bring the Troops Home!” with raised fists as they rode by.

Of course, not everyone was happy. As cool as Rude Mechanical was, the best part of the day was watching the foaming-at-the-mouth-hysterical counter-protesters. Good thing the cops had them barricaded in a cage, because I think they were scaring the hell out of the tourists. Repeated screaming branded us as “terrorists” and “traitors” who were “demoralizing the troops.” We were charged with “destroying America” and having “forgotten 9-11.” Also, I was informed that Islam is apparently “infiltrating our culture” and “destroying our schools.” One lady’s favorite shtick was to point to a picture of a veiled Middle-Easterner while shouting “This is the face of evil!” Honestly, it was so over-the-top that some of the passersby actually thought they were watching a daily-show-style anti-war parody of pro-war, racist jingoists. But my favorite part was when the pro-war lady started listing off the Ten Commandments as the antidote to radical Islam. Was it possible that she didn’t feel even a tinge of irony as she cried, “THOU SHALT NOT MURDER! THOU SHALT NOT KILL!!” Maybe it was supposed to be a joke.

The Friends of the Greenpoint Library are still looking for a few more Greenpoint artists to donate a small artwork (max size 11×14 inches) for a benefit for said library to be held next Saturday, September 15th, from 11am to 2:30pm. Artworks will be sold for $25 (and all artists must currently live or work in Greenpoint).

So, considering the crowds of hipsters walking around my neighborhood carrying Pearl Paint bags, it shouldn’t be a problem to round up a hundred or so artists from Greenpoint with a small artwork to spare for the benefit of their local community. It’s also a good way for aspiring artworlders to get their work seen by the bigwigs, as awesome blogger (and Mother-Teresa-hatin’) James Wagner, Barry Hoggard (from Artcal.net and bloggy), as well as Leah Stuhltrager, director of Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, will be among the jurors deciding upon a $100 prize. Full details here.

I’ll be including something myself, although I’ve yet to decide exactly what. I sent them a JPG of the painting/collage from which the banner image for this blog was taken, but I think I’d rather do something new that tackles a more local issue. It will probably be about gentrification, since my daily walk to work includes passing no less than 5 noisy construction sites scurrying to produce even more luxury condos, completely unaffordable for the vast majority of people who already live in Greenpoint.

On the activist front, there are a ton of anti-war activities being organized for the next month or so. I’ll be at the Times Square military recruiter station tomorrow along with other members of the War Resisters League. In the afternoon, we’ll be joined by the radical tunes of Rude Mechanical Orchestra. Stop by if you get the chance. Saturday is the kickoff of a week-long action called Operation No Recruits, for which various NYC anti-war organizations have teamed up in an effort to occupy the area surrounding the Times Square recruiter station from 9-5 for an entire week.

Other local and semi-local events coming up include:

Sept. 15 — ANSWER coalition in Washington DC

Sept. 21 — Iraq Moratorium (black armbands, etc.)

Sept. 25 — Bush at United Nations, Demonstrations

Sept. 29 — Troops Out Now, Washington DC

Oct. 27 — United for Peace and Justice, regional actions

Who says there’s no anti-war movement? Now get out in the streets!

[on a side note, could someone please tell millionaire lawmakers to stop playing the lottery. I mean, seriously.]

It’s not too soon to start thinking about next year’s Republican National Convention, which will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota. Check out this hilarious video, produced by the RNC Welcoming Committee. It’s even been picked up by the Star Tribune.

With the recent news that activist Daniel McGowan has been given a prison sentence of 7 years for acts of so-called “terrorism,” it’s alarmingly clear that the U.S. judicial system will continue to expand its legal definition of “terrorism” in order to exact harsher punishments on activists who engage in property destruction (but do not physically harm anyone). I’m posting below an excellent op-ed piece from the LA Times, written by the sister of Jonathan Paul, the ALF activist who faces sentencing today for his role in burning down a horse slaughterhouse nearly 10 years ago.

(courtesy of Commie Curmudgeon)

My brother, the ‘terrorist’

MY BROTHER IS considered one of the biggest domestic terrorists in the country. You probably haven’t heard of him, and I think that’s odd. After all, he’s dangerous. He’s trying to overthrow our country. He “doesn’t like our freedoms,” or so President Bush has said of terrorists in general, so I suppose that applies to my brother too.

Let me tell you a little bit about him. He likes the History Channel. He’s a Trekkie. He cried (in secret) at the corny 1980s movie “Turtle Diary.” He’s good at fixing things. And, most important, he has devoted his life to stopping animals’ suffering. To this end, he has broken the law. He crept into animal laboratories to free dogs. He dismantled corrals to release wild mustangs. He impersonated a fur buyer to film the treatment of minks. He put himself between whales and whalers despite warnings that his boat would be impounded and that he would be jailed. And nearly 10 years ago, he burned down a horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Ore. It is for this final act that the U.S. government considers him among the ranks of Osama bin Laden, Eric Rudolph and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.

“This is a classic case of terrorism,” the federal prosecutor said earnestly to the judge during a hearing last week in my brother’s case.

My brother, Jonathan Paul, has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., to burning the Cavel West Slaughterhouse. He will find out on June 5 whether the judge considers his actions deserving of the “terrorism enhancement” to his sentence sought by the government. (Nine other members of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, who pleaded guilty to different charges, are being sentenced as well. The first, sentenced Wednesday, was deemed a terrorist.) If a terrorism enhancement is imposed, my brother’s recommended sentence could go from less than three years to more than 14 years.

Don’t let me give you the impression that I think arson is something to be taken lightly. I do not. The irony is rich in this case: I was a San Francisco firefighter for 13 years. I was angry and dismayed that my brother chose arson as a route to stop animal suffering. But “a classic case of terrorism”?

Federal laws define terrorism as one of a laundry list of offenses committed for the purpose of coercing the government to change its policies. It is a broad definition, designed to give judges wiggle room and adopted at a time when terrorism was a new concept. Congressional hearings in 1995 and 2001 make the original intent of the laws clearer. When House members and senators described acts of terrorism, every example (Pan Am Flight 103, Oklahoma City, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Tokyo subway attack) involved the killing of, or the intent to kill, human beings.

But recently the government has moved away from the idea of terrorist-as-murderer. The case involving my brother represents the first time that terrorism enhancements have been sought when all the evidence shows that the defendants took affirmative steps to make sure no one would be endangered.

Clearly the government is trying to expand — or more accurately, dilute — the definition of a terrorist to encompass those who engage in property damage. Egregious property damage, yes, but still just property damage.

Past terrorism cases also have involved targets with government links. But the Cavel West Slaughterhouse was a private Belgian corporation; its horsemeat went to Europe and Japan. The prosecutor has argued that some of the horses were wild mustangs, sold by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and that therefore there was a clear intent to disrupt government policy.

There’s a legal term for this. It’s called “overreaching.”

How much safer do we feel now that ELF/ALF members, who have never hurt or intended to hurt a single human being, might be confined to a maximum-security prison? Could it really be true that the most powerful country in the world feels “coerced” by a bunch of bunny huggers? Is the confident “I am the decider” leader of this nation being bullied by vegans? Or is it possible that the government just wants to crow about convicting another “terrorist” while the main one is still at large?

A lot has been written about the radicalization that led to Bin Laden’s hatred of the U.S. Let me tell you a bit about the conversion of one member of the group that the FBI now considers the “No. 1 domestic terrorist threat.” When my brother was 15, he shot a bird out of a tree with a .22-caliber rifle. It fell to the ground, wings spread, gasping for air. He killed it with a rock. Then he vowed he would never knowingly harm an animal again.

My brother had hunted before. (Less perhaps then Ted Nugent but more than, say, Mitt Romney.) And yet on that day, he had a revelation. He can’t explain it. A religious person might say it was the tiny cruciform bird on the ground. A psychotherapist might surmise that something had been percolating for a while, only to burst to the surface. Who knows? What I do know is that since that day in 1981, my brother has been resolute in the rescue and protection of animals.

Anyone who lives in Redmond will tell you how terrible the Cavel West Slaughterhouse was. The horses screamed all day. Their blood clogged the sewage system. The stench was unbearable. The killings, by many accounts, were slow and agonizing. My brother’s sentiments were far from radical, and they had nothing to do with the government. His intention was simple: save the horses.

This does not mean arson was the right thing to do. If you call my brother a lawbreaker, I won’t argue. But labeling him a terrorist dilutes the meaning of terrorism. And you demean all the Americans, and all those around the world, who have died in real terrorist acts.