Anarchist films: Howard Zinn doco screening March 11!

In memory of anarchist historian and activist Howard Zinn who passed away earlier this year, Beyond Resistance presents: You Cant Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

This rousing documentary uses Howard Zinn's life to tell the story of political activism in the 20th Century and beyond, from the anti-Fascist protests of the late '30s and early '40s, through WWII and post-war unionism, to the civil rights movement in the South, the Vietnam War, and now, Iraq. Zinn has been an active participant in all of these movements, giving a white, academic, radical voice to people fighting for respect and justice around the world, often risking his own life and livelihood.

A shipyard worker when WWII broke out, Zinn saw first hand the damage of war when he signed up for the U.S. Air Force. Amazing color footage of the first rough, hand-made WWII napalm bombs lend a startling vividness to Zinn's description of his understanding, post-war, of the deadly reality of a soldier's job.

With narration taken entirely from Zinn's own writing, read by actor Matt Damon, filmmakers Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller skillfully capture the spirit of Zinn's life work.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.linktv.org/programs/zinn

Lite refreshments and childcare will be provided, so come on down and join your local anarchists as part of our monthly film nights at the WEA! Zines, books and more will also be available on the night.

Thursday 11th March. Doors open: 6.30pm. Film starts: 7pm.
WEA (59 Gloucester Street), Otautahi/Christchurch.

Koha entry.

For more information contact:
otautahianarchists (at) gmail.com
http://beyondresistance.wordpress.com/

Howard Zinn dies at 87

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

"His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. "When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide."
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn's best-known book, "A People's History of the United States" (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and Silber. Dr. Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped, however.

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard before joining the Army Air Force during World War II. Serving as a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force, he won the Air Medal and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University as a 27-year-old freshman on the GI Bill. Professor Zinn, who had married Roslyn Shechter in 1944, worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor's degree from NYU, followed by master's and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women's institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were the novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism now became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at countless rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and another leading antiwar activist, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn's involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966). Dr. Zinn was also the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement so as to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus."

Dr. Zinn, or his writing, made a cameo appearance in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting." The title characters, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People's History" and urges Robin Williams's character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009. Damon was the narrator of a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did so.

Dr. Zinn's wife died in 2008. He leaves a daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington; a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaugthers; and two grandsons.
Funeral plans were not available.

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Happy New Year from Beyond Resistance!

Kia ora koutou katoa,

With the onset of 2010 come new issues, new sites of struggle, and new opportunities for challenging the current system which unfortunately still exploits and consumes our lives. But it's not all doom and gloom — we in Beyond Resistance can look back over 2009 with some satisfaction. In the space of our short existence we've managed to come together as a functioning collective, put forward some pretty decent ideas, and have hosted a number of events which have helped cement our formation. In the relative situation of low struggle in Aotearoa and demoralisation since the 2007 raids on our communities, we feel that what we have achieved together in Otautahi this year has been no easy feat.

Participation and support in our monthly film nights has been awesome. Making childcare a possibility by involving tamariki in all our events, again, is something we can all feel proud of. A public forum on the ACC cuts, participation in community struggles around the recent Post Office closures, strike and picket support, and protest action, has been a visible part of what we've been up to over the last 6 months. Behind the scenes we've also had an amazing collective hui, drafted what we consider is a great strategy for moving forward, and formed strong, educational relationships with each other. As Lucy Parsons — American anarchist involved in radical labour struggles — once said: "Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals." We feel we've come some way in doing this, therefore a number of the goals we set ourselves on formation are being achieved — others we look forward to tackling in the new year. One of these goals is the formation of an anarcho-syndicalist network, to link those of us struggling in the workplace and the wider community.

We've felt very supported by local friends and also from international solidarity — especially our comrades in Australia — so we'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you!

Until that time when we are all free from capitalist social relations, when we can develop all that is currently being suppressed, when we can take direct control of our own lives in our workplaces and our communities — until that time, we extend our solidarity and support to those struggling for a better world, and continue the struggle in our own corner of the globe.

"We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that."
Buenaventura Durruti — Spanish anarchist and labour militant in the Spanish Revolution

Love and Rage,
Beyond Resistance

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Papers Past: traces of Anarchist Communism

Killing time on the internet is something I do a lot... and what better way than to trawl through Papers Past, an online archive of historical New Zealand newspapers. Unfortunately the Maoriland Worker, Industrial Unionist and other radical papers aren't there, but a search with the terms 'anarchist communism' returned some interesting results (amongst other returns, which all included almost demonic attacks on anarchism and anything slightly radical). The letter below is from the September 8th, 1917 edition of 'Truth'. Also found an advert for a talk presented by the Freedom Group — possibly Aotearoa's first anarchist group — and the Grey River Argus piece on 'Socialism and Anarchism'. Geek.

Here's part of the letter (click on it to enlarge). What is interesting in it is the critique of state socialism (read state capitalism) and a scathing critique of the state in all its forms.

Taking ourselves seriously... a serious response

Anarchist strategy is something which has preoccupied a lot of my thought and practice this year — partly through becoming involved in a new anarchist collective, and partly because, like all of us, I often wonder what I could be doing with myself to further the collective struggle in bringing about a different kind of world. This same question is posited in the opening address of ‘Taking Ourselves Seriously’, so it is with excitement that I’d like to share some collective positions myself and others have come to with regard to this question. I hope to address some of the issues that all four speakers put forward, mainly framed around the notion of ‘marginalisation’, and ‘sites of struggle’. Through looking at these topics I hope to put forward strategies which I think may be beneficial in pursuing, and touch on what I think the key element to constructive action is, namely forms of struggle which encourage the building of ‘dual power’.

The panelists illustrate a desire for movement away from action-based activism with no coherent structure, towards a more constructive anarchism. I think this is a worldwide trend, where ineffectual black bloc action and Crimethink-style anarchism is being eclipsed by a return to ‘classical’ or ‘class struggle’ anarchism — what is termed by Schmidt and van der Walt in ‘Black Flame’ as the ‘broad anarchist tradition’.

Josh MacPhee talks about mining history, and questions whether or not what we are mining is effective. While he is specifically talking about graphics, the same question applies to anarchist strategy. It seems for many anarchists, not much ‘mining’ has gone on at all — there seems to be a real lack of knowledge around our own history of mass-based anarchism. Unfortunately, it may be because this kind of struggle (as Cindy points out) can seem both boring and bland due to outcomes not being entirely visible or felt. Yet long-term community and workplace struggle is the work we need to be doing as anarchists, in a way that transcends generational burnout and is outside of our radical milieu.

Marginalisation
How do we escape our anarchist ghettos and make the jump from isolated experiments to struggle for mass social transformation? Ideas are put forward throughout the talk, such as more public discourse, linked spaces and an understanding on what we want anarchism to become. Yet these ideas still presume an outsider position with regard to struggle. While this is understandable due to our current marginalisation, I would put like to put forward that we look back — to moments of struggle where our ideas were accepted and practiced by a large minority, if not a majority, of the radical left and the labour movement in general.

The key, as Maia points out, is figuring out and identifying the sites of intervention around us. Yet how can we intervene when we are more often than not located outside mainstream society, or more specifically, the workplace? Maia talks about dropping out in such a way that enables future effective struggle, yet it’s the very notion of dropping out that I think negates our effectiveness. This is not a dig an Maia, but an illustration of her own observation that we tend to be comfortable in the margins of society. What is needed is not a more effective way of evading capitalist social relations but an immersion into and confrontation with them — sites of struggle not outside of capitalism (and not through attempts to 'escape' it), but within and amongst it. And not immersion in the sense of getting involved in an existing mass struggle with the ‘correct line’ and then leaving, but instead to build and help shape that mass struggle in a way that practices what we preach, from the outset, and through it's many twists and turns. How to do this? I hope to illustrate below that it is the methods and forms of anarcho-syndicalism, namely radical workplace action and community assemblies, that we need to be building.

I have to disagree with the strategy Joshua advocates: while worker’s self-management and more ethical forms of capitalist economics now is worthwhile, it is premised on the idea that capitalist relations can be transcended while within a capitalist society — something that leads to: a) a successful business model fostering the notion of gradual and peaceful change without challenging or confronting capitalism, and/ or B) permanent entrenchment within a system that ultimately cannot and will not be reformed. What we need is self-managed struggle, not more successful models of capitalist existence. This is nothing new: any reading of Bakunin, Kropotkin, or the recent debate on libcom.org about co-operatives illustrates my point a thousand times more succinctly than I could.

Sites of intervention
So, where are the sites of intervention we should engage in? In short, the workplace — in connection with the wider community. Our biggest success in the past, as anarchists, has been when our ideas have been accepted and practiced in workplace and community struggle. It is these sites of struggle which have, or have come close to, destabilising and smashing capitalism through the power we hold as producers. This is not to transplant tactics of a bygone era onto today’s world, but to learn and engage with strategies that were effective. Nor am I advocating we all get factory jobs. I am simply pointing out that this kind of struggle has been done before — we don’t need to re-write the book, but add a new chapter.

Although the nature of capitalism has changed — invisible markets, highly decentralised capital, out-source and casualised labour — the classical analysis of producer power is still relevant. It is in these sites of struggle that action can really be effective, not through pure discourse, but praxis — struggles structured in such a way that fosters self-organisation and the building of alternatives through resistance. What I understand this as is ‘dual power’. The collective I am part of has this to say about dual power:

“Dual power is the idea that the embryo of the new world must be created while fighting the current one; ‘building the new in the shell of the old’. It means encouraging working class organs of self-management, where we can exercise our autonomy and restrict the power of boss and government until such time as we can confront and abolish both. A dual power strategy is one that directly challenges institutions of power and at the same time, in some way, prefigures the new institutions we envision. Therefore, it not only opposes the state, it also prepares for the difficult confrontations and questions that will arise in a revolutionary situation.”

The key to building dual power is coherent strategy and structure, or more specifically, structures which ‘encourage working class organs of self-management’ which challenge and confront the power of the state. Ethical, self-managed businesses do not confront the state. Instead, radical, revolutionary and ultimately threatening dual power could be built through structures such as industrial networks and mass, community assemblies.

Examples of dual power in practice
Here I’m directly quoting from our collective strategy, which has been drafted through experience and in light of worldwide examples of successful, class-based action.

Industrial networks are a structure by which revolutionary industrial unions and other forms of libertarian workplace organisation can be created. An industrial network is a network of workers who support the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism, namely direct action, solidarity, collective decision making and self-organisation. The role of this network would be to call for workplace assemblies, argue for direct workers control of struggle by these mass assemblies, promote direct action and solidarity, put across anarchist ideas, and build organs of dual power.

Community assemblies take a similar form as above, but based in the wider community. It is the building of forums by which we can raise issues that affect our working class communities, and provide a means of solving them. As such, it is a means of directly involving local people in the life of the community and collectively solving the problems facing us as both individuals and as part of a wider society. Politics, therefore, is not separated into a specialised activity that only certain people do, or a specialised workplace existing as an island within capitalism.

The community assembly is the mass assembly of its members, practicing direct democracy in struggle. By organising our own forms of direct action (such as tax strikes, rent strikes, environmental protests and so on) we weaken the state while building dual power. Again, the structure is as important as the issues at hand.

In these ways, a grassroots movement from below can be created, with direct democracy and participation becoming an inherent part of a local political culture of resistance, with people deciding things for themselves directly and without hierarchy. The combination of community assemblies and industrial networks will be the key to abolishing the current order, and to create an anarchist communist society. These forms of struggle allow us to become accustomed to managing our own affairs and seeing that an injury to one is an injury to all.

In this way, revolutionary dual power can be created, not from outside, but from within, and together. As Sam Dolgoff said in 'The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society': "To forge a revolutionary movement, which, inspired by anarchist ideas, would be capable of reversing this reactionary trend, is the task of staggering proportions. But therein lies the true relevance of anarchism."

Taking ourselves seriously

A talk given at Bluestockings Books in New York, New York on Sunday, October 18, 2009 by members of the Institute for Anarchist Studies with Josh MacPhee, Maia Ramnath, and Joshua Stephens. Anarchism has become a widely espoused organizational practice in radical American communities, but many anarchists seem to revel in the margins and are prone to dismissing their own potential. Join our panelists for a discussion of the long haul of social transformation as we work toward an egalitarian, directly democratic society.

Art and activism

CLICK HERE to watch the video! An old talk/slideshow by Zoe and I at Pecha Kucha, looking at things like art, 'activism' and what it means to be an anarchist making 'art'. Just remembered about it and thought I'd post it up. Merry christmas.

What Would Jesus Buy? December film night!

Beyond Resistance presents (in true Christmas spirit): What Would Jesus Buy?

What Would Jesus Buy? follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!

From producer Morgan Spurlock (SUPER SIZE ME) and director Rob VanAlkemade comes a serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy) was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer’s jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping.

Since 1999, Reverend Billy has gone from being a lone preacher with a portable pulpit preaching on subways, to the leader of a congregation and a movement whose numbers are well into the thousands.

Through retail interventions, corporate exorcisms, and some good old-fashioned preaching, Reverend Billy reminds us that we have lost the true meaning of Christmas. What Would Jesus Buy? is a journey into the heart of America – from exorcising the demons at the Wal-Mart headquarters to taking over the center stage at the Mall of America and then ultimately heading to the Promised Land … Disneyland.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCQEhqZO-gE

Food, drinks and childcare will be provided, so come on down and join your local anarchists as part of our monthly film nights at the WEA! Zines, books and more will also be available on the night.

Thursday 17th December. Doors open: 6.30pm. Film starts: 7pm.
WEA (59 Gloucester Street), Otautahi/Christchurch.

Koha entry.

Siege 'Drop Dead' EP

These guys have been growing on me! Extremely fast hardcore which predates the really bad crossover/grindcore stuff. 1984!

From Wikipedia: "Siege's unprecedented level of extreme hardcore punk was some of the fastest and heaviest of its time, incorporing lightning fast tempos, chord changes, vocal delivery, and blast beats into its style, thus setting the stage for the emerging thrashcore/grindcore scene which would later develop alongside the extreme metal movement. And though rather short-lived and little-known during their existence, subsequent musicians have cited the group as a profound influence, including the famous British grindcore band Napalm Death and the American thrashcore band Dropdead, whose namesake was derived from the title of Siege's demo of the same name."

Dick Scott: Rona Bailey Lecture 2009

Every odd-numbered year the Labour History Project hosts the Rona Bailey memorial lecture, to commemorate a great political and cultural activist who died in 2005. This year's speaker is Auckland author and historian Dick Scott who was a friend of Rona's from 1946. Dick will speak about his own life and work and is reliably irreverent and witty. All welcome!