At a little after three in the afternoon, people began arriving at the Gold Student Center, many of them barefoot and sporting anarchist fashions. Most of them appeared to be college-aged, and there were a few people of color among them. Tablers began setting up, and an image of a capital "A" in a circle was projected onto a large screen.

Conference organizers handed out schedules and introduced themselves. "We're going to start with a sort of 'lightning round' of speakers, mostly on local topics, then we'll get into the main round of speakers, so make yourself comfortable." While waiting, we discussed the conference's line-up and local actions such as the previous day's protest of Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist.

The first speaker discussed the critical mass phenomenon and showed a YouTube trailer for the film Still We Ride, which documents police crackdowns on critical mass bike rides in New York.

He was followed by a speaker from the Friends of the Bernard Field Station. The field station is an undeveloped plot of land owned by the Claremont Colleges just north of the campuses, and he discussed efforts to preserve the land from development. "A lot of the issues that we're talking about with the field station is how, as a community, as a college community, how we use our space. And what we value, what our values are." He went on: "To students, it's a no-brainer that this should be--not only is this something that is good to not build on, but it should be the heart of the Claremont Colleges."

One audience member asked what the Friends of the Station were going to do during the summer to ensure that the land will not be developed while the students are away on break. "There are two reasons why they're not going to be building in the summer. One, the administrators have told us that." This answer elicited chuckles. "Secondly, because of the city of Claremont's permitting requirements, environmental impact reports, to get permits to build, some of us are registered to be informed if someone is planning on building on the station."

The third speaker was an expert on urban planning then shared some theory with us, explaining how social and political norms influence our urban environments. "Right now in the field of urban planning, desperation is very high. Current theory, I would say, is demented and blind and we need a new moral theory based not on ownership, but on anarchy."

"Ownership is the claim of exclusive control over a person, place, thing, or idea. Capitalism is the systematic implementation of that ownership construct. Authority or authoritarianism is the forced application of that ownership concept."

"This has repercussions in zoning and standardization in urban planning. In urban planning, we want everything the same. Capitalism wants this because it facilitates exchange in the marketplace."

The alternative she proposed for urban planners and others in the art design world was to strive for uniqueness. "Because when you make it more and more unique we all tend to assign more meaning to it."

A poet discussed the effort to recover the lost contributions of the anarchist poets, graphic artists, and writers of Argentina. The goal of the collective behind the Voices of the Lost Cannon Project is to "capture some of the lost canon of culture, art, poetry, of political thought that's been systematically excluded from the academy, from the English department, from the history department..." To do so, they are sifting through the archives of anarchist organizations, "particularly with the FLA of Argentina," and republishing writings and artwork they find there. They do this out of a belief that "the poetic expression of the anarchist movement from around the world is a vital resource to the continued struggle for social justice." The speaker talked about the authors of the poetry (most of them are anonymous) and then read several poems from the collective's first book.

The next speaker's mere presence caused some consternation among certain participants, and this is where the story gets a little weird. He is the webmaster of anarchy.net, and, lest the following reflect poorly on him, he may not be aware of what follows.

Apparently, anarchy.net is part of a large network of websites with extremist-sounding domain names. These names range from the far left (eg. fuckcapitalism.com, anarchy.net), to generally radical (eg. fuckchrist.com), to the racist far-right (eg. hessian.org, churcharson.com, and burzum.com, the website of a Norwegian hate-metal band). Some of these sites are just linkfarms to porn sites and the like, but most of them have political content and link to each other, a main site being corrupt.org. These domains are all registered to, or are sometimes separated by a degree or two from, "Throne Networks" based in McLean, Virginia.¹

The common thread among these sites is support for a "third position" of "national anarchism." Trying to find the reason in this ideology is pointless; it soon reveals itself as nothing more than an "anarchist" front for white nationalism. This so-called "third position" is promoted by a small band of European racists (many of whom are former leftists), including Troy Southgate, the late Julius Evola, Richard Hunt, Flavio Gonçalves, Peter Topfer, Keith Preston (who is American), Hans Cany, and Otto Ernst Schuddekopp.²

The suspicion is that the intent of this network is to cast a "wide net" out to youth disaffected with the current political system, and use it to introduce fascist ideas to them.

Some activists spoke to some of the conference organizers about this weirdness prior to the conference, hoping they would un-invite the speaker in question. The action seemed a little drastic to them, and they assured the worried anti-fascists that they could bring the issue up during the question-and-answer session.

The speaker was credited with being the founder of anarchy.net, and the talk centered on a flowchart instructing members of the US Air Force on how to make pro-Air Force comments on blogs.³ The speaker informed us that "the US government is currently employing counter-bloggers to lurk insurgent websites," and that "[w]hat this all means for we, internet folk, is that the posts that we make are being watched by the US government in an attempt to change our view." These military people, he told us, "are told to act as civilians so perhaps people will just see a seemingly-intelligent post and not think of the [inaudible] plot [inaudible] media."

He then went on to talk about the website, reading aloud questions from readers and his answers. He took no questions.

The fourth and final speaker of the "lightning round" was Pitzer College professor Dana Ward, founder of the anarchy archives. His gave an overview of the archives and expressed a concern for the future of the study of anarchism at Pitzer once he's no longer there. He also discussed his research on Reclus and his intention to write the history of anarchism in the United States.

"The main focus of the archive, of course, is classical anarchism," he said, but he hopes to "expand anarchy archives to include a modern section." He elaborated, "it will basically be organized by blocs. (Have people talked about blocs yet? I just got here. Well basically, the modern anarchist movement is divided into four different blocs. Many of you may be familiar with the black bloc. They get a lot of the attention at the G8 or the G20 or in Seattle and so forth, and the black bloc is engaged in direct action. There is a white bloc that is also involved in direct action but the white bloc is non-violent direct action, the black bloc is willing to use violence to defend peoples' rights. There's also the green bloc, which is environmentally oriented, a pink bloc, which is organized around gender issues.) Anyway, that's what I hope students at Pitzer are going to be able to help me produce in the next coming years."

He emphasized the importance of the accessibility of anarchist texts. "Marxism has basically proven its incompatibility with human liberation, and the natural home then, for those who believe that we should live free lives, is anarchism."

The next speaker, from the Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders (CAROB) gave a well-researched and thought-provoking talk that centered on the criminalization of undocumented people, drawing several parallels between the war on immigrants and the drug war.

She was followed by a compañera who talked about Anarchist People of Color (APOC), which is "not an organization, it's more of a network, an affinity group, a series of gatherings." She briefed us on the history of APOC since 2003, and then provided updates on what is going on in Los Angeles. Finally, she discussed her academic research on anarchist theatre in Latin America, "to see how they're performing their politics today."

We took a break for some vegan eggrolls and noodles and to chat, before one of the conference organizers invited us back in for "the moment we've all been waiting for," an address by Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs.

Just prior to his introduction, Clair sounded an alert about an upcoming police checkpoint and briefly discussed the struggle against checkpoints in the local Latino community.

Then the co-founder of the recently-established Pomona Food Not Bombs introduced "a really cool guy."

Brimming with a smile, McHenry spoke for almost an hour, seemingly without taking a breath the whole time. His trajectory, beginning by studying under Howard Zinn at Boston University and getting involved in the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance, brought him into contact with nearly every social justice movement and action around the world over the past thirty years. He then showed a video about his trip to Nigeria and took a few questions from the audience.

One man stood up and asked, "It's kind of a pressing issue... in a couple weeks, May Day weekend, the city [of Santa Ana] is basically shutting down one of our last family shelters, which is going to put 150, 200 people out on our street with cops to beat them and move them, disappear them, whatever they do to them, just get them out of the area. How do we defend ourselves and our communities against that when we're being attacked violently? How do we react to that non-violently?"

McHenry suggested organizing a contingent to live in the shelter during the days leading up to the eviction to organize from within, and to simultaneously organize support outside the shelter. Then, on the day of the closure to organize a sit-down strike and occupy the shelter to keep it.

The last speaker, who appeared on the screen via Skype, was author Derrick Jensen, who began by addressing the issue of violence versus non-violence. This beginning did not sit well with certain sectors of the audienc, particularly the pacifist contingent, who objected to his acceptance of violence as a tactic in the struggle. His point was that the human race has inflicted so much harm on the Earth and the other species, a push for collapse would go a long way toward bringing about environmental justice. Many were not satisfied with his reasoning, and one person attacked him verbally. However, due to the technology involved in the connection, Jensen had difficulty hearing the discourse going on in the hall. He was nonetheless able to launch a counterattack. After the talk, the audience engaged in a debate, which, according to one conference organizer, "Unfortanetly people ended up focusing on the points where they disagree, over the points where we have commonality.... and it seemed ideological issues became more important than alliance-building or organizing."

One compañera asked an organizer what "the big deal" about Jensen was. He explained his perspective, "one of the reasons the Vietnam War ended, and this was one of the Trotskyists' strategies, is that they went into the army and started organizing from within. They started their own anti-imperialist newpapers at every base, and eventually started taking out their officers. Once that started happening, the troops got pulled out. Right now I don't see how anyone involved in Food Not Bombs, or who goes to anarchist meetings, could be involved in any kind of [violent] resistance. That's the thing about Derrick--he has the potential to reach people people in the army and the Marines who are disaffected and disillusioned with the system and who have the training and capability."

Despite the conflict, most people had positive responses to the conference overall. There was a lot of excitement about the participation of big-name anarchists McHenry and Jensen.

After the speakers, musicians performed, among them the group Lux Nova Umbra Est.

------------------------------------
1. Much of the investigation into this network is discussed in these two threads: http://libcom.org/forums/thought/anarcho-fascism-07022008 and http://libcom.org/forums/thought/anarchist-fascist-website-13032008

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-Anarchism

3. Shachtman, Noah. "Air Force Releases 'Counter-Blog' Marching Orders. Wired.com, 2009-01-26. Accessed 2009-04-23. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/usaf-blog-respo.html



Many thanks to researcher Andrew Davis for his contributions to this article.

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Love does not imply pacifism.

"Here's the problem. Two people walk through a forest. One considers how extraordinarily beautiful the forest is, and how wonderful it is to be alive. The other notices how much of this forest could be turned into immediate fiscal profit, and thinks about how that could be done. Question: Which of these people will probably make more money off the forest? Question: Within this culture, which of these people is more likely to end up in a position of power, making decisions that affect the human and nonhuman communities in and around the forest? Question: How do
those of us who care stop them from destroying the forests?"

To the accusations above:

About nine months ago I submitted my writings to Anarchydotnet. I was accepted and was brought on as a writer for the site. Months later I was faced with the problem of others stating that the site was not what it seemed. I contacted the old writer of the site and questioned these accusations. He reassured me that it was just a rumor and the reason was that the site was on a "free speech server" so there was sites there that did not wish to be traced. but assured me that the site was legit and there were no links to questionable sites.
Tonight I will email him once again and ask that he remove all links to any sites. If he refuses I will discontinue my articles for the site as this will expose the sites true colors. If this is the case, I will pursue another site to continue my writings, and my support of anti-fascist action. -A.O.C.-

If you ever reach the same conclusions as some of us have, we would love to get as much information about who is behind Anarchy .net as possible, names and e-mail address or any other information you can pass on about who you contact to ask your questions to.

the internet archive still holds bits of the old past versions of anarchy.net - mostly a porn link farm that "united anarchists" claims to copyright.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://anarchy.net

Here we can find their the final entry for Racism:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071106163422rn_1/www.anarchy.net/anarchy/anarchy_library/racism/

"Anarchy and Racism

Concussion

No one seems to care how contradictory it is for the powers that be that push the ideas simultaneously that
a) all races are inherently equal
b) there is no such thing as "race"
c) some races need special assistance.
It is obvious that there are noteworthy biological differences with different human populations. However, this shouldn't be either a free ticket to discriminate with great prejudice nor to think that racial gaps should be diminished by interbreeding, because both forms of thinking are very far from what is stable and close to reality.

Copyright © 1998-2007 United Anarchists / Corrupt"

Here we can see some behinds the scene discussion on what they might put in their final statement:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070220114132rn_1/www.anarchy.net/anarchy/anarchy_library/racism/

http://web.archive.org/web/20070222075038/www.anarchy.net/anarchy/anarchy_library/racism/racism.txt

"[seen on USENET]

And no one seems to care how contradictory it is for the powers that
be that push the ideas simultaneously that a) all races are inherently
equal, b) there is no such thing as "race", c) some races need special
assistance, etc"

And;

http://web.archive.org/web/20070222075047/www.anarchy.net/anarchy/anarchy_library/racism/riseup.txt

" Rise Up Crazy White People!


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw


Crazy white people push the advances of modern civilization past the
complacent and subservient value system of the rest of humanity.
White people are the craziest, most ambitious, most ambiguous and
consequently most successful people in history.
- white people got on ships and sailed to places they weren't sure existed
- white people killed the Indians so they could own the land
- white people love war
- WW1, WW2, WW3?
- war is a source of creation, an engine that spurs ingeniuty because
of the imminence of survival needs
- war creates inventors by necessity and instinct
- Americans in general are less like the white people because of their
capitalistic society and government. While there are still some crazy
white people in America, most people are like prostitutes, fakirs, or
gangsters though they operate with a more polished and socially
acceptible business protocol.


"It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
priviledged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste,
to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles."
- George Berndard Shaw


- the crazy white person strategy is ultimately successful for humanity
because it pushes barriers without questioning or accepting any
rigid beliefs or social boundaries
- this strategy costs a lot though
- many go unknown, misunderstood if understood at all
- the average or stupid will never understand genius
- cliches are used by the media and society to explain away complex
ideas and acts that would cause serious concern if discussed
- some become artists or involve poetic truths in their acts
- some burn out
- some simply go nuts
- serial murderers are predominately white




Case studies:

- UNABOM/Kazcynski
- smart people don't fit in society, so now what?
- society wants to manufacture useful people, but only to its definition
of useful which cannot be debated.
- what if these people see a problem they need to correct? what if
it requires breaking the law for the greater good of not society
(which is misdirected in the first place), but of humanity.
- PRESERVATION OF HEALTHY HUMANITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MAINTAINING
A TEMPORARY SOCIETAL VALUE SET!
- what if manufacturing useful people eviscerates and desiccates their
spirit? are human droids a positive result?
- social grievances
- complaints are of no use
- if two sides argue and neither is willing to yield on their concerns
then someone loses
- if one is willing to yield on a crucial concern then the result is
a sub-optimal one
- when monetary interests make up both sides then the result is usually
of no concern to anyone but the companies involved. it doesn't
benefit humanity who pays for it, but is only a battle of power and
money between two greedy groups.
- when citizens are excluded and are made powerless because they
cannot compete with monetary interests, those who truly care will
take the matter into their own hands

- Manson
- the situation is hopeless, a scapegoat has been found - now the scapegoat
accepts the task of an actor and plays the role society demands
- comedy and amusment from a tragic situation
- an Eastern idea: if nothing can be changed then embrace fate
- paradox
- who is in jail? Manson points fingers at those who run into their
homes at night and deadbolt the door, comfortable that the "bad guys"
are securely isolated in jail
- genius through isolation: a mind as innocent as a child's, not tainted
and heavy with adult baggage and social obligations

- Hitler
- should a citizen or leader seek to make his country better and improve
life for his countrymen? or is ambition less favorable to lazy
contentment?
- when someone or some group has been brutally abused (Germany after WW1)
isn't revenge a normal human trait? how many cycles will this continue?
once started the battle rages on between sides that demand the
fluctation continue and the other side accept the greater defeat.
- when people need more space and there isn't any, isn't war inevitable?
isn't this what animals and insects do? or are closely packed houses,
town-houses, and apartments the future of efficiency. anyone not
comfortable with a lack of space and privacy is not a sufficiently
socialized beast - meaning that the people of the future will not even
blink at conditions like today's overcrowding.

- Vikernes
- nihilistic art of (com)passion
- Compte: Varg as companion of the Nordic people
- murder is ok if it is for the sake of truth
- jail is just another social isolation - no harm to those who choose
social isolation over a mendacious JC entertainment lifestyle
- Varg: we can learn from the past
- what is causing us to disregard our heritage and past knowledge?
- why do we accept modern stupidity and knowledge about timely things
instead of knowledge about life, thoughts about life and meaning?
- why have we turned against ourselves and our people to follow false
values and idols?
- hate is good: there is much to be hated in this society, there is also
much that could be loved...if only things were better, different.
(an ambitious romantic dreams)

- Nietzsche
- we are surrounded by lies and pretty cliches that we take as
unquestionable and unexplorable truths
- morality
- Judeo-Chrisitan religion
- hollow idols and ideals
- the meaning of humanity
- the meaning of philosophy and art
- Nietzsche as gardener: the artist creates, the philosopher destroys
- when society offers no hope and no hint at broad understanding, one
can become like a hermit and write books that shout out to those few
who will understand.
- how one can write for one's companions in the past and present even
if there are few or none today
- or is this an epitaph of society and philosophy?"


This is a bit deeper than simply sharing a free speech server.

Sorry, it is difficult to understand the article author's position that "nationalist anarchism" is really only a disguise for facism. If one self-described "nation" converts to an anarchist way of governing by self-rule, then how could this be the same as "corporatism", the actual definition of facism, the merger of corporations and the state? Most nationalist anarchists are not into corporations OR the state..

When anarchists claim they will not accept certain positions with the claims of being true to anti-facism, they exclude a diversity of positions they dislike, whether nationalist anarchism, green anarchy (aka primitivism), or other ideas that differs from their prefered choice of anarcho-communism..

The window of acceptance in the anarchist community gets smaller each year, with certain views making up core principles that everyone agrees with, or they find themselves rejected and shunned for having different views. It is generally thought amongst the anarcho-socialist crowd that green anarchists like Jensen, Zerzan, etc... are uncaring about human lives as they push for collapse, since loss of technology may result in greater numbers of people "dying off" as resources become temporarily unavailable by conventional means..

The survivors post collapse will be those most able to maintain their body temp, calorie and water intake through the challenges they will face. In some ways this favors individuals and groups of people who have already learned about outdoor survival skills and traditional indigenous food collection methods. We get everyone from nature loving hippies to indigenous tribes who have remained fixed in their wilderness based cultural awareness, to migrants who have endured physical hardships crossing the deserts and others who would have the greatest probability of surviving post collapse conditions from experience and knowledge..

On the other hand, sub/urban residents who lack outdoor experiences, the elderly, ill and physically/mentally disabled people may have the most difficult time surviving if nobody from the above groups lends a hand to help. In the middle is everyone else, people who have some basic understanding of outdoor survival though never put it into practice..

The balance is for the least likely to grow stronger through learning and experience, and the most likely to sacrifice some of their gains by helping the weaker. Of course this is classic "Social Darwinism", where again a more powerful group of well prepared people will need to help those who are least prepared for post-collapse conditions without resorting to exploitation or bullying behavior. Well prepared people will deal with the frustration of dealing with people who have spent their entire existance indoors playing video games and now attempt to adjust to outdoor conditions post collapse..

The post collapse conditions that green anarchists advocate as ideal would certainly be "unfair" for the least prepared, so some could avoid supporting this position as it creates a new class of disadvantaged people, the "less prepared" who will need the support of the "well prepared" in order to survive. This sets the stage for possible inequality and exploitation, though this time without the support of an organized police state. Just think "Lord of the Flies" times one million, and include adults along with the children..

The arguements in favor of racial separatism will need to be further examined without censorship, as people who have ancestry from certain geographic regions would be best off returning to similar climate and solar conditions post collapse. Skin color directly correlates with the climate our ancestors evolved in over many generations, from the high solar intensity along the Equator to the muted sunlight of the Northern Latitudes. This goes beyond nationalism, religion, ethnicity and culture, it has to do with percentage of melanin content in the skin being incfluenced by the strength of the solar radiation from their ancestral region. Light skinned people lacking melanin absorb more UV radiation and burn easier, while dark skinned people absorb less UV radiation and can become easily depressed during times of low sunlight, as Vitamin D isn't available to them for uptake through their skin. During winter months in northern latitudes, darker skinned people need to physically ingest vitamin D from other sources (liver, fish, etc...), as sunlight is too weak for them to process. We only ignore this today because many people live indoors in climate control and can avoid prolonged exposure to sunlight or counter lack of sunlight with supplements..

If an African lion and an Arctic polar bear share a wall of their cage in Omaha, Nebraska, which direction would each travel towards if they were both released from their cages? One would guess the African lion would journey towards Florida in search of warmer temps, and the Arctic polar bear would journey towards Alaska in search of cooler climes. People who have ancestors from different climates tend to prefer outdoor conditions most similar to their ancestor's climates, minus a few exceptions..

Same goes for gender based occupations like hunting, gathering and tool making, some tasks are better performed based upon manual dexterity (size of fingers) and upper body strength, where there are some noticeable differences between males and females. Many indigenous cultures had specific tasks for men and other tasks for women, and this was based upon physical differences between the sexes..

The "equality uber alles" contingent of the anarcho-socialists are inherently opposed to these ideas as this promotes voluntary separatism (not state enforced segregation) of people based upon skin color and climate preferences, gender and physical characteristics..

These are all uncomfortable issues that will need open and honest discussion in the near future, adn the response of politically correct leftists to censor material they term as "offensive" will only cause more problems in the future. Debate the pros and cons all you want, just don't try the narrow path of censorship, that leads to only ignorance and folly..

Some thoughts on greater inclusion;

"American Revolutionary Vanguard opposes all military aggression by the government of the United States against other nations. The natural allies of American revolutionaries are nationalist, separatist, anti-globalist, populist, anarchist, libertarian and class struggle movements throughout the world. The peoples of the earth who desire sovereignty for themselves are asked to support the struggle of domestic American revolutionaries, whether they be Arabic or Islamic nationalists, European separatists, anarchists or anti-globalists, indigenous peoples everwhere and Latin American rebel forces."

found @;
http://attackthesystem.com/american-revolutionary-vanguard-twenty-five-point-program/

American Revolutionary Vanguard is correct in recognizing that most critisism of national-anarchism comes from leftist controllers who are threatened by random actions of individual anarchists as challenging thier power structure;

"I’m only a fellow traveler to National-Anarchism, but if I had to summarize it with one idea, I’d say it’s primary message is self-determination for all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, all those Tibetans, Palestinians, Kurds, Basques, Irish, Chechnyans, Lakota, Maori, Hmong, Oaxacons, Miskito and other occupied, colonized or oppressed peoples that the Left pretends to give a flying fuck about. Another idea might be the self-preservation of all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, kind of like those endangered spotted owls, snail darters, and sea turtles the Left is always wringing hands over.

Of course, what really gets a hair up the ass of the Left is the fact that National-Anarchists apply the same standards to indigenous Europeans that they do to other peoples. For some reason, this seems to evoke images in the Leftist mind of apartheid, Jim Crow or Nazism, although it would seem to a rational person that self-determination for all peoples is the polar opposite of a stratified racial caste system like Jim Crow or apartheid, much less a genocidal ideology like Nazism."

sorry but no matter how you want to justify it, national anarchism (and market anarchism/an-cap) just aren't really anarchist. Anarchism has an inherent critique of both capitalism and hierarchy, and your racist bullshit doesn't cut it. Yeah, there's differences between anarcho-commies and primitivists, hell there's even heated arguments, but at the end of the day, green and black and red and black are on the same sides. We are NOT on the same side as so-called "national anarchists" that show up with White Pride World Wide hoodies--we bash the fash regardless if you claim to be an anarchist.

I like how the article relates to "anarchist fashions" concerning the barfootedness and the A. Im sorry. BUT FUCK YOUR IDENTITY POLITICS. its sad when the one thing that really matters , which to me is caring about folks and the earth and not letting it go to shit, gets restricted by these fucking ideas of "syndicalism" and "primitivism". your intellectual bullshit is demeaning and very divinding. as far as im concerned, last time i checked, a mother who was just trying to survive was more concerned about feeding her children then fucking tbakunins views on fucking society. so seriously start fucking acting and stop fucking theorizing...end

oh and i like how no one showed a picture of derrick jensen.

real nice.
and how everybody who was engaged in an arguement that night were mostly white.

Thats the quandary, isn't it? As long as leftists exist, Mother Gaia has AIDS.

i hope to be there the day we burn the anarchy archives
and all our ridiculous flags.

we can use the ash to replenish the soil, the dirt, the land.

the skyline will look beautiful on fire.

burn baby burn

we are at war, no time for theory, organize wider networks of solidarity

no passaran

What kind of call to unity is that? Oh, I know... let’s be anti-theory so we can bring people together. We don’t need mindless action any more than we need bodiless theory... we need praxis... we need tactics and strategy put into action. The collective hosting the conference is involved in several important campaigns. We are working with day laborers, with the homeless; we are organizing a larger and larger network to oppose police check-points. We are in the streets to "welcome" fascist speakers to our community. It is divisive and counter-revolutionary to say that understanding how the CNY and the FAI organized themselves (in spain in the 1930s) is a waste of time. It is foolish to suggest that the hard work and painful lessons of our bloody past should not be digested so that we may fight more effectively today.

The only reason that there is not now an active Anti-FA alliance across the southwest is this kind of in-fighting and bickering... instead of organizing and standing in solidarity. We focus on almost any point of contention instead of looking at our commonality, we point fingers at why others are not doing enough instead of stepping up and doing the hard and humble work it takes to build a movement: Long nights on cold streets warning people about the pig; slowly building trust with paperless people, Sunday mornings cooking FoodNotBombs, salting jobs, printing papers, holding benefit concerts, writing letters to prisoners, squatting buildings and building community, taking action to stop the destruction.

We need to swallow our egos, our little pet issues, our music tastes and our tests to see who is more anarchist than the other.... we need to learn to trust each other, to allow a diversity of tactics, to learn from each other’s strong points, to help strengthen each other’s weak points.

In the end all I know is that no matter what you say you believe; the people I trust are the ones who I can count on to be in the street with me, to show at the meetings, to give their weekends, their lives, to this cause.

But no matter how much love we have, how much rage we have... no matter how strong we are... we also need to be smart, we need to know what’s been done before, what worked and didn’t... we need to understand the terrain of the conflict, our strengths, their weaknesses. We have a long tradition to draw upon, anyone who advises burning that history, ignoring the lessons of the dead, anyone who pisses on the graves of all the brave brothers and sisters who fought this fight before... they are no ally of mine. They are advising us to walk blind into a battle... and that’s just stupid.