I'll preface my comments by conextualizing my perspective: I'm a Black
anarchist, born and raised in LA, I'm 29, and I'm male. I've never been a
punk. I'm an anarchist cuz I'm against all forms of status, prestige, and
illegitimate authority, and I work to build a society that shows people
that self-worth, self-realization, and joy in life are not zero-sum
quantities that depend on competition within hierarchies. I grew up poor
on welfare, but I've attended schools with middle-class and wealthy folks
on the East coast. As an adult, I've lived a couple of years abroad,
mostly in Asia and in South America. I work as a community organizer, and
am damn happy and lucky to get paid to do meaningful work and not be a
stone-cold corporate slave. I see my long-term work as all about building
community-based alternative institutions and less about mass mobes.
>From what I can tell, anarchists that are outright enraged by DAN are
precisely the ones who had no role in organizing with DAN or D2K for the
demos...There's a tendency for people, anarchists included, to get stuck in
an attitude of 'tribalism', where people find it much easier to categorize
and demonize people they don't know than engage them, dialogue with them,
get to know them. There's a tendency for people to have this absolutist
'US' vs. 'THEM' mentality that really is at the socio-psychological roots of
nationalism and the herd-mentality. It'd be nice to see more so-called
anarchists do a little self-analysis on this tip. Without such an
awareness, they really do the goals of anarchism a disservice. (Yeah, I know
i'm speaking from my own perspecitve of what anarchism means. But that's
automatic, since I can't speak from anybody else's perspective.) I was on a
panel at the anarchist conference and one of the panelists had a very
vehement attitude that dismissed DAN out-of-hand as 'reformist' and 'full of
paid activists flying around the country from action to action'. What was
funny is nothing she said seemed grounded in any experience. It was
straight vitriol and vilification. Although what she said didn't resonate
with everyone gathered in the crowded session, it resonated with enough
folks there that it made me feel kinda depressed about the level of
ignorance and the sense of almost apocalyptic isolationism in the anarchist
scene. (There's an almost religious fervor folks get when they're caught up
in the idea that everyone who's not exactly like them is out to get them or
is in cahoots with THE ENEMY...God, the material is rich for further
analysis of mass-psychology amongst people who see themselves as
fundamentally alienated from society and yet replicate many of the same
patterns in terms of herd-mentality and simplistic, reductionist
thinking...)
Having said this is not to say that there weren't dynamics within DAN that
were problematic. There were. There was a tendency among SOME local
organizers to have an almost obsessive worry about things getting out of
hand 'once all the out-of-town hordes show up'. Some degree of concern
seems justified: the concern that there'd be a lot of white folks coming
into town who didn't have any analysis of white-supremacy and racism as it
affects the activist scene, while a good number of the local DAN organizers
where people of color and whites used to working in consciously multiracial
anti-white supremacist settings. DAN organizers wanted to make a conscious
effort to begin to address the ways in which other recent mobilizations were
so dominated by white activists. (This is an issue of long-term concern
that, partially thanks to the efforts of DAN-LA, has begun to be addressed
on many fronts, e.g. the inclusion for the first time of discussions at the
Ruckus Camp about white-supremacy and how the movement(s) can address it,
'anti-racism for white folks' workshops at the convergence center...) There
was also a tendency among SOME local organizers to obsess about making sure
that meetings went off in a way that wasn't derailable. (A not unheard-of
concern among any organizer dealing with making meetings happen in settings
where all sorts of folks, from provocateurs to psycho-sectarians to random
wingnuts may and do appear.) Although I didn't attend later spokescouncil
meetings (I was too busy doing other logistical work), I did attend early
(before 8/14) meetings before a lot of affinity groups had formed. There
were some occasions where process felt rushed through in order to get
through an agenda. Another factor in this is that, in LA, we are not all
anarchist--probably about a fourth. (Nor would I want us to be, since from
my perspective as an organizer for the long-term movement, the whole goal is
to draw in and work with people who aren't already just like me.
Transformation happens through working and struggling together across
differences.) Many of the organizers were new to the spokescouncil and
affinity group model, and it was an important learning process for them.
Another factor in the way the actions played out in LA was that early on
DAN-LA decided to focus its organizing resources on actions led by local
community groups and organizers. (The Seattle-WTO strategy of shutting down
the whole thing was ruled out early on as a goal.) So, when out-of-town
folks showed up a couple of days before the actions, instead of it being
like, 'Okay. Here's a map of Downtown LA. Here's a map of the Staples
Center. Go to it!' it would be: 'Okay, you can do what you want. But the
actions that DAN-LA has decided to focus the bulk of its resources
(communications, media, meeting space, etc.) on are the following...Oh, and
one other thing: if you plan on participating in an action organized by a
local group, please respect their particlar action plans...'
Although I originally thought the local groups would come up with very
elaborate, very confrontational action plans, many settled on more tame,
more controlled types of actions, without the kind of excitement one would
see in, say, a reclaim the streets type of action. But hey, that was their
prerogative. What some local groups planned or didn't plan, however, didn't
stop some other (mostly local) activists from doing a very powerful and
creative banner-hang right across the street from the Staples Center. I'm
tired of activists whining about what others aren't willing to do, and how
this oppresses them. I say to them: Fuckin' DIY, asshole, and recognize
that it's different strokes for different folks.
Now, one of the tendencies amongst SOME DAN organizers was to assume that
anarchists coming to town would mean a movement that would be even whiter
than otherwise and that allowing the North American Anarchist Conference
(NAAC) to share the space with the convergence center would help precipitate
a police-shutdown of the center. At the critical meeting where the question
of allowing the NAAC to use the convergence center for workshops was being
discussed (the NAAC organizers needed to know right away cuz of time
constraints), one idiotically obstinate and misinformed but respected local
organizer (white, late 20s, male) said 'If the NAAC uses the convergence
space, the space will feel even less inviting to local activists of color
[because of the white crusty-punk feel of it all that was prevalent in
Seattle]'. I informed them all that, of the 7 people of color in that
particular meeting, 4 of us where anarchists. So the idea that the
anarchist scene is whiter than the general activist scene is wrong. The
non-anarchist then took the tack that the fact that John Zerzan was on the
list of guest speakers at the NAAC would give the cops an excuse to shut it
down. (Zerzan's a primitivist who apparently is noted for singing the
virtues of fucking shit up; he was on the panel with me at the NAAC and said
some annoying things about 'getting beyond Leftism', but I personally
haven't read a lick of his work...I hear he says civilization is the root of
all evil...) Anyway, after some debate, the guy finally decided to play the
asshole and said that, no matter what, he would move to block a decision
allowing the NAAC to use the space. Folks in general were miffed at his
intransigence, and some of us anarchists wanted to continue the discussion,
but it had been a long meeting and most people were damned tired and ready
to go home...
This illustrates how, although so-called anarchists caught-up in the throes
of tribalistic 'US' vs. 'THEM' herd-thinking may cry out, 'See! DAN wouldn't
let the NAAC use the space. DAN must be against us!' the actually reality of
DAN's decision around the NAAC is more complex, and the actual reality of
DAN is more complex.
Now, as far as all the other claims of police collaboration or moving to
quell Black Bloquites on the part of DAN-LA, I say: Bullshit. I don't have
any simpler way to put it. Although I can't account for what individuals in
groups like the ISO tried or didn't try to pull at the march to the jail (I
wasn't there), I know there was no DAN-LA effort to do anything to stop
Black Bloquites. The most organized thing that happened was a dialogue,
held the weekend before the DNC, where a bunch of folks from DAN-LA and the
convergence space, a bunch of folks who were participants at the NAAC--many
Black Bloquites, and random other activists got together to discuss the
tactical value of property destruction in the kinds of activities that had
already been planned by local groups. It was a very interesting discussion,
with around 80-100 folks present. It was facilitated by a Eugene anarchist
named Tim who was doing a lot to help out with logistics at the convergence
center. Although at the outset it was established that no one in the room
had the position that there was something morally wrong with property
destruction (and this was always the DAN-LA position), it seemed that, when
some people would question the tactical value of certain kinds of property
destruction in the context of, say, permitted marches or rallies, or
question the way certain property-destruction tactics might create
sensationalist media coverage that pulled attention from the issues locals
were organizing around, the people defending property destruction wanted to
take it to the level of principle and claim that the opposition was being
reformist or counter-revolutionary. (I swear, there's a way in which the
fetishization of or self-identification with certain tactics becomes
tantamount to raising those tactics to the level of unquestionable religious
rituals or sacraments. More material for further analysis...)
I do know that, on Monday at the rally organized by D2K (not DAN), when the
BBites at the fence were involved in escalating tensions with the police on
the other side (throwing plastic bottles et al., getting pepper-sprayed, et
al.), the rally security folks (all a bunch of non-sectarian activists
themselves) did go over and try to deesacalate the situation. They were
worried that things would get out of hand and that thousands of people who
didn't know what was going on, who just came for the rally or to hear Rage
Against the Machine or Ozomatli would be put at risk of police violence for
something they had no say over. What specifically happened, I don't know.
I'm told the spread-thin security teams were drawn away from the fence when
the cops stole our puppets on the other side of the rally, and then the
fence tensions between BBites and police escalated soon after, justifying
(for the police) the shut-down of the rally...It coulda led to a riot, and
maybe that woulda been interesting and empowering and consciosuness-raising
for some folks, and maybe it woulda been great for media coverage...but then
again, maybe it woulda fucked over a lotta people who weren't part of any of
the organizing and thought they were just coming to enjoy some music...Maybe
some of the people woulda been trampled over as folks were trying to escape
the gas...I think more-militant-than-thou folks should organize their own
rallies instead of pulling shit at rallies organized by others. Just make
sure the folks they invite understand that there may be a riot cuz people
intend to provoke police by throwing bottles at them.
D-I-fuckin'-Y.
For Liberation Everyday,
Shawn McDougal
SMcdougal@afsc.org.
