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Excerpts from Direct Action: An Ethnography

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In the words of a friend editing a rough draft of a project of mine, explaining the strength of his critique: “You’re playing with fire. It’s necessary, but it’s a very serious responsibility. You’re responsible to [the project] but you’re also responsible to the anarchist ideal in the name of which you work.”

In that spirit, some excerpts and explorations from Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber:

To sum up then: direct action represents a certain ideal– in its purest form, probably unattainable. It is a form of action in which means and ends become, effectively, indistinguishable; a way of actively engaging with the world to bring about change, in which the form of action– or at least, the organization of action– is itself a model for the change one wishes to bring about. At its most basic, it reflects a very simple anarchist insight: that one cannot create a free society through military discipline, a democratic society by giving orders, or a happy one through joyless self-sacrifice. At its most elaborate, the structure of one’s own act becomes a kind of micro-utopia, a concrete model for one’s vision of a free society. As Emma Goldman (and others) observed, the fact that the authorities define such acts as crimes is not a problem in this regard– insofar as it constantly reminds actors to take responsbibility for their actions, and behave with courage and integrity, it can be a great advantage. The problems, rather, come when one moves beyond confrontation to other forms of engagement with a world organized along different lines.

A revolutionary strategy based on direct action can only succeed if the principles of direct action become institutionalized. Temporary bubbles of autonomy must gradually turn into permanent, free communities. However, in order to do so, those communities cannot exist in total isolation; neither can they have a purely confrontational relation with everyone around them. They have to have some way to engage with larger economic, social, or political systems that surround them. This is the trickiest question because it becomes extremely dificult for those organized on radically democratic lines to so integrate themselves in any meaningfuk way in larger structures without having to make endless compromises in their founding principles. For direct action-based groups, even working in alliance with radical NGOs or labor unions has often created what seem like insuperable problems. On a more immediate level. the strategy depends on the dissemination of the model: most anarchists, for example, do not see themselves as a vanguard whose historical role is to ‘organize’ other communities, but rather as one community setting an example other can imititate. The approach– it’s often refered to as ‘contamination’– is premised on the assumption of that the experience of freedom is infectious, that anyone who takes part in a direct action is likely to be permanently transformed by the experience, and want more. (210-211)

On anarchism
“Marxism has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy; anarchism, an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice.” (211)
“Anarchism is not an attempt to put a certain sort of theoretical vision into practice, but is instead a constant mutual exchange between inspirational visions, anti-authoritarian attitudes, and egalitarian practices.” (221-222)
“It’s when … a revulsion against oppression causes people to try to live their lives in a more self-consciously egalitarian fashion, when they draw on those experiences to produce visions of a just society, when those visions, in turn, cause them to see existing social arrangements as even more illegitimate and obnoxious– that one can begin to talk about anarchism.” (215)

“If one looks at what these supposed founding figures [of anarchist theory-- Godwin, Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin] actually said, one finds most of them did not really see themselves as creating a new theory. They were more likely to see themselves giving a name and voice to a certain kind of insurgent common sense, one they assumed to be as old as history.” (213)

On direct action:
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” (514)
“[Direct action means] acting as if, at least as a moral entity, the state does not exist.” (204)
“Direct action means insisting on acting as if one is already free.” (207)

“On the one hand, [global justice activists] set out to expose the undemocratic nature of the WTO and similar institutions that, they felt, together formed the backbone of an unaccountable world neoliberal government that sought the power to suppress existing democratic rights in the name of corporate power. On the other hand, they were determined to organize the whole action according to directly democratic principles and thus provide a living example of how genuine egalitarian democratic decision making might work. When dealing with global institutions, this is about as direct as an action can get.” (210)

It is here I would emphasize above all the influence of feminism. Historically, the contemporary anarchist emphasis on process emerged … more than anything else from organizational crises in feminist collectives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is what finally drove organizers to begin seriously looking at Quaker practice, and, eventually, developing the whole apparatus of affinity groups, spokescouncils, consensus, and facilitation. Even more, one can see the emphasis of feminism in the whole direction of the movement. ‘Situations’ do not create themselves. There’s an enormous amount of work involved. For much of human history, of course, what has been taken as politics has consisted of a series of theatrical stages, and dramatic performances carried out upon them. One of the great gifts of feminism to political thought has been to continually remind us of the people making and preparing and cleaning those stages and, even more, maintaining the invisible structures that make them possible– who have, overwhelmingly, been women. The normal process of politics is to make all those people disappear. One might say that one impact of feminism on direct action circles has been to foster a new political ideal that aims to efface the difference. To put it another way, this new ideal insists that action is only genuinely revolutionary when the process of production of situations is just as liberating as the situations themselves. The entire process becomes an experiment, one might say, in the realignment of imagination, in the creation of truly non-alienated forms of experience.” (532-3)


recommended reading: Africa

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The other kind of traveler kid.
I’ve lived/traveled in several countries across Saharan and Sahelian Africa, as a student/researcher, an NGO worker, and just being a kid. My stories from those travels and others, as well as criticisms and thoughts about NGO work and “international development” will come out on this blog in time, when I get the words and ability to write them. (blog themes, repeated to self over and over, and perhaps manifesting someday: resistance on three fronts: personal [sexual assault surviving, mental health healing, anarchy living], dismantling international neo-colonial capitalism [now with riot porn!], and searching for, building international solidarity especially with the people of Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East [how to practice? how to write it?]).

In the meantime, my favorite books about the continent and individual places within it, histories, economics, and that complicated, loaded word, development. Links refer to my review on Goodreads.

Updated list here.

African authors: memoirs & novels
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
Anthills of the Savannah – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
Taken together, these two novels tell the story of pre-colonialism to the British invasion, from Liberation to its corruption. Achebe is a master. Start here.
Segu – Maryse Condé (Mali, West Africa)
Technically, Condé is Guadeloupian, not African, but this novel of the origins of the African diaspora is her family’s history; she is telling her own story. Spanning 500 years and several generations of one family, Segu traces the same time period as Achebe’s, but focuses on the simultaneous invasions of French Christians and Muslim Arabs that destabilized the Bambara empire and resulted in enslavement and colonial rule. A history that is rarely told in the West.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood – Fatima Mernissi (Morocco)
The Joys of Motherhood – Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria)
African feminists writing proudly & critically. Mernissi is one of my favorite authors.
Weep Not Child – Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah (Sierra Leone)
Aké: The Years of Childhood – Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary – Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria)
Links – Nuruddin Farah (Somalia)
Desert Dawn – Waris Dirie (Somalia)

“International Development”: Poverty, health, economics, politics
Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa – Katherine Dettwyler (Mali)
Continent of Mothers, Continent of Hope: Understanding and Promoting Development in Africa Today – Torild Skard (West Africa)
My Maasai Life – Robin Wiszowaty (Kenya)
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (global)
A troubled field but important, essential subjects to learn about. I recommend these four because they use their outsider perspectives intentionally, bridging the gap between Western audiences and a world of nuanced issues that escape the US press.

Place/history/travel
The Emperor – Ryszard Kapuściński (Ethiopia)
The Chains of Heaven: A Walk in the Ethiopian Highlands – Philip Marsden (Ethiopia)
The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy – Philip Marsden (Ethiopia)

Amedeo: A True Story of Love and War in Abyssinia – Sebastian O’Kelley (Ethiopia)
This last one is almost a joke. A lot of the English-language literature about Africa is horrible colonial garbage by adventuring, murderous explorers or self-congratulatory, pimped out settlers. I read it anyway because they’re one way to learn colonial history; sometimes colonial travel narratives are the only books available that describe a foreign place to English-speaking outsiders. This was particularly true when I lived in Ethiopia and had no real library access. But forget all that: Amedeo is one of the craziest motherfuckers who ever lived, and his story, as fucked up, fascist, and militaristic as it was, is one hell of a good one.

recommended reading: Books on trauma

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Summaries of books on post-traumatic stress and suicide intervention.


Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies
by Pattrice Jones

At a recent Street Medic training, a trainer called post traumatic stress the hidden scourge of the street medic movement. I’d expand that to include social justice movements in general. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress are typical amongst those who worked in New Orleans after Katrina; those who have worked on environmental & animal liberation direct action campaigns; those who have supported survivors of sexual assault; those who have done solidarity work in Palestine or researched malnutrition in Mali; those who have participated in summit protests and the street medics who were there to keep them safe, just to name a few. Unacknowledged and untreated post-traumatic stress leads to burnout which weakens the movement, and has a serious impact on activists’ emotional, mental, and physical health. And yet despite how common it is and how devastating it can be, there is a general refusal amongst activists to engage their own trauma, take it seriously, and treat it. Trauma is a cruel joke that comes with the work, and the best way to deal is to shut up about it and drink.

That is the (perhaps tiny) niche this book is aimed towards: activists, support people (legal, medical, & victim advocates), and researchers/witnesses. The main premise of the book is that the work that activists do is often traumatic. Some level of trauma should be expected when we engage in activist work and therefore we need to learn ways to prepare for, cope with, and eventually heal our stress responses. Jones coined the term “aftershock” as an inclusive word for the variable ways that post-traumatic incident stress manifests itself in activists. “Aftershock” is her response to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), with its rigidly defined medical definition that requires months of expressing a minimum number of traumatic reactions for diagnosis and treatment. The term “aftershock” normalizes the stress: Why should emotional reactions to slaughterhouses or police brutality be considered a disorder?

The first part of the book lays out background on psychology and how animals (including people) react to stress. Next, Jones explains why activism can be both empowering and traumatic. Trauma isn’t caused by specific events necessarily, but by the experience of a loss of power and agency. That’s why those who witness and choose to fight injustice can also be traumatized, even if the actual injustice (the hurricane, the pepper spray, the rape) wasn’t directed at them: they can still experience the impotency of being unable to do anything to (really) help. Couple that powerlessness in the moment with a solid critique of the larger structures of oppression at play and perhaps identification with the oppressed person (and maybe throw in some direct stressors like police surveillance or overwhelming responsibilities like legal advocacy, too), and one can really end up feeling at a total loss. Note though that Jones holds onto activism as a way to heal trauma, too: taking concrete steps to correct injustice reclaims power and proves that one isn’t helpless.

The heart of Aftershock is divided into practical steps to address activist trauma, geared towards activists, supporters, therapists, and movements– that is, how movements can create a culture that heals trauma. Trauma is disconnection. The mind will take traumatic memories and basically box them off, hide them; aftershock reactions are those memories surfacing unexpectedly. For example, seeing blue flashing lights in a safe environment can bring on sweats and intense fear as suppressed memories of police repression break out and surface. Healing trauma, then, is about reconnecting.

First, reconnect the memories of trauma into your life story. The steps to do this may begin with simply remembering what happened. Then, by telling someone who will listen without judgment (say a friend, comrade, support group, or therapist) integrate those memories into a narrative that connects them to your past and future. Take it further and place your experiences into the larger narrative of structural oppressions and social justice struggles. Make sense of them through your politics and realize yourself as an active agent participating in a struggle that is bigger then you but incorporates you. Share this story, perhaps by writing a zine or article or speaking out.

Next, deal directly with your emotions and the physical ways they manifest themselves. This may be the hardest, most often ignored, and most important step. Jones writes:

Conscious effort may be required to achieve … integrity. That means listening to, rather then brushing aside, those uncomfortable feelings that come when our actions are not exactly in line with our beliefs. That may also mean summoning the courage to ask: “What was that about?” when an unbidden thought, surprising feelings, or kneejerk reaction arises [triggers:]. At its most profound level, authentic integrity means being who you purport to be and taking responsibility for your behavior, even when it is rooted in trauma. If you have found yourself doing things that “aren’t me” when you are sleepy, drunk, dissociated, or in the grip of strong emotion– and especially if those things are in any way hurtful to others– you will need to make material lifestyle changes to make sure you don’t do those things again and then figure out what you will need to do to heal whatever internal ruptures led to the uncharacteristic behavior.

The last three steps to healing that Jones writes about are to foster connections between people, animals, and your ecosystem. Trauma isolates, so reaching out to others– literally, asking for help and acknowledging that you cannot heal yourself alone– is a necessary step to integrating yourself back into your human community. Coming to understand your emotions as a natural and mundane part of being an animal can also help you deal with them. This means cultivating relationships (not just intellectual ones!) with animals, learning to identify on an emotional level with non-human animals. Finally, “making connections is not done if we feel apart from, rather then a part of, the quivering living biosphere to which we belong. … Traumatized people often feel notably lonely. Many times, people seem too dangerous to trust. At such times, communion with nature and other animals can offer genuine relief.”

Aftershock offers many more details and specific steps to take to heal trauma. Jones includes extensive notes and references for further study. I really feel this book is worth it and plan to push it on my friends and comrades. We’re activists, after all, and should be able to actively address the trauma in our own lives even as we focus outwardly on the world around us.

Final note: Many readers may have a hard time swallowing the first few chapters and the last chapter of this book, and Jones’ consistent elevation of speciesism and ecocide as equivalent oppressions to patriarchy and white supremacy. Jones comes from an animal rights background that necessarily shows itself in her work. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have enough room in “Aftershock,” which she mostly dedicates to practical advice on treating trauma, to explain an entire expanded theory of intersectionality. And honestly, I found the theoretical parts of this book kind of intellectually lazy, filled with gaps and manipulated facts. But before you dismiss her entirely, I urge you to check out Derrick Jensen for a better articulated understanding of life and oppression as a wholly connected ecosystem.

==
EDITED TO ADD:
I don’t think I was critical enough of the political standpoint that frames this book.
Please check out this comment from a friend that calls out this book’s transphobia and ‘animal lib shame train’: “fuck a book about healing trauma that re-traumatizes people.”
==


Suicide Intervention Handbook
by LivingWorks

I read this to gain skills for mental health support work, to apply better self-care, and to understand what happens when you talk about suicide with a trained responder; what are the next steps, what words/actions triggers what reaction, and how does that process go. This organization offers workshops called ASIST, which are basically suicide prevention first aid courses. I would love to take one.

This book takes the viewpoint that any verbal acknowledgment of suicidal thoughts is an invitation for help. Talking about suicide is a sign of internal ambivalence. While a person may have clear reasons they want to die, they often hesitate to go through with it because they also have reasons to live. The job of the suicide prevention first responder is to look out for verbal and emotional cues that someone is suicidal, and then help explore with them that person’s reasons to live, whatever it is that is keeping them from having already done it. The next step is to create an immediate safety plan that delays suicidal action until that person can access further resources.

The steps in a suicide intervention, as outlined in the book, and summarized in my own words, are:
1. Explore. Notice and verbally ask about verbal and emotional clues that someone is really struggling in their life. Trust your intuition but also actively look for signs that people are responding suicidally to their stresses. Focus on how someone is feeling rather than your own assessment of how bad an event/stress is.
2. Ask. Straight up ask if someone is thinking about suicide or planning to kill themself. You won’t put the idea in their head if they’re not already thinking about it, and dancing around the question keeps it taboo and prevents someone from opening up to you.
3. Listen. Specifically, ask about and listen attentively to both the reasons for dying and the reasons for living. People often gotta dump out the former before they can begin to explore and give any merit to the latter. Be sure to hear both.
4. Review risk factors. Anyone who is talking about suicide needs first aid. The shape of that first aid may be determined by several risk factors that sound alarms that someone may be closer to taking their own life:
–Prepared: They have a current suicide plan, possibly including how, when, and where. (Disable the plan)
–Desperate: They talk about unbearable physical or emotional pain, which makes escaping it urgent. (Ease the pain)
–Alone: The person feels alone. (Connect to resources)
–Familiar: They have tried suicide before or are otherwise familiar with it. (Protect against the danger and/or support past survival skills)
–Vulnerable: They have a mental health issue, especially depression or schizophrenia. The book didn’t highlight this, but PTSD often contributes to suicide as well, for example in soldiers and rape survivors. (Link to health worker)
5. Contract a safe plan. Create a safe plan that includes the suicidal person agreeing to postpone suicide for a certain period of time, during which they will connect with further resources. Be specific about how this will happen.
6. Follow-up on everything you agree to do.

Safe plans may include calling a suicide hotline, going to the emergency room, seeing a therapist, or simply agreeing to get in touch if they consider suicide again, depending on how urgent the care needed appears. It may include removing guns, pills, or other things necessary to physically disable a plan, and potentially staying with that person until you can pass them on to further help. The idea is to get that person to agree to what they need to do to prevent them from immediately harming themself. If the suicidal thoughts are not serious or urgent, that may just mean opening lines of communication for them to talk again if the feelings become more overwhelming. Having a talk that specifically mentions suicide is one way to allow it to happen again.

See also:

battles at home and abroad

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So I’m reading the seminal work on post-traumatic stress, and the thing that is first jumping out at me here is that, in terms of brains processing traumatic events and having crazy longlasting craziness afterwards, rape is the rough equivalent of combat. Long-term sexual or domestic abuse is the rough equivalent of long or repeated tours of combat duty in a conflict zone. Watching your friends get shot and committing atrocities on the battlefield does something similar to your brain as laying still and doing nothing while someone finger fucks you when you don’t want them to. The intimacy and the freeze, the lack of control and the breach of trust, these are things that can lead to the worst symptoms; brutality is only one of many contributing factors.

See also “War Paint.”

The Mad Map

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A regularly updated version of this post will be available here:
http://www.anarchapistemology.net/trauma

Soliciting comments with more tools and resources, and especially your own mad maps. It would be fantastic to collect several. Comment and I’ll get back to you via e-mail if you want to write your own entry.

===

A Mad Map is a guide for navigating your own crazies, whatever forms they may take. Mad Maps may include a list of triggers, compiled to remind you and the friends you choose to share it with of what sort of things may set you off. It may include a list of warning signs, the actions you do and emotions you feel that indicate you may be headed for something worse, like a serious depression or dissociation.

Below, I share my de-escalators, the steps I can take to bring myself down from or out of some madness. This map is mine– yours will invariably have different ideas and actions in it, apply to a different set of crazies. But there may be some overlap, so I’ll share mine with you. Some of the issues I am dealing with include this nice long list: PTSD. Anxiety. Dissociation. Depression. Self injury. Disordered eating. Blinding anger. Motherfucking emo angst.

They fall into two brought categories: panic (including panic attacks, triggers during consensual sex, and insomnia) and depression. I’m including a list of resources (books, zines, webpages) at the end. Feel free to share your own mad maps, specific tools, and resources.



Immediate crisis & panic attacks: hyperarousal, panic

Notice and react.
NOTICE physical feelings.
STOP the trigger.
CHOOSE to continue or do something else.
ENGAGE in that activity.
RETURN to your body: still triggered? Repeat the steps.
…and when is your period due?

Things to do:

  • Take herbs
  • Bilateral stimulation (tapping) with a calming/grounding resource
  • Txt friends: “Please send [love, hugs]” or “Remind me [simple thing I already know that the crazy is over-riding]…”
  • Call friends: “I need you to talk about something light to keep me present” or “I need you to listen so I can verbalize what is going on.” Call until someone can talk. Make a list of friends to call, including a therapist if you have one. It is ok to call someone even if you will get over this.
  • Physical grounding:
    • Change location: walk somewhere, preferably nature. hiding is ok.
    • Get warm, rest or nap
    • Eat fatty, salty comfort food (avocado, chocolate, bread & nutritional yeast, ramen, chips)

Herbs to take

  • Passionflower
  • Rescue Remedy
  • Emily’s shock mix: anemone, cayenne, lobelia, & kava
  • Grounding mix: passionflower, calamus, & hops
  • Whiteflower oil (aroma)
  • Menstruation/PMS/hormone balancing herbs

Trauma/triggers during consensual sex

STOP.
Use whatever strength and ability to communicate you have to stop the sexual activity and end the trigger.
Say: “Stop,” “No,” “Wait,” “Hey,” whatever words you have.
If words are too hard, don’t work: Tap on the shoulder. Push away with hands or feet. Turn away. Grab their face. Use LOUD body language.
It is ok to continue sexin if that feels right, and it is ok to put clothes on and go drink tea if that’s safer. It is ok to change your mind. Check in.

Things your partner can do

  • NOTICE. Pay attention to body language, especially withdrawal, disengaging, quieting and stiffening. Check in if you are unsure, check in often.
  • Stop all sexual activity and give them space, stop touching them until/unless invited
  • Ask yes or no questions: Are you ok? Do you want me to [hold/touch] you?
  • Physical grounding: Do you feel the blanket? The cold air from the window? Do you know where you are? You are safe. You are in this house, this street, this city, state, country, turtle island, my arms.
  • Change locations, get food/tea, offer herbs, put on clothes
  • Be hyper aware of consent, but understand that triggers can come from consensual sex; good sex sometimes mirrors or reminds people of the physical acts of abuse but they are not the same thing at all. Take deep breaths and give support, you can weather this. Check in with & about yourself later, support is hard work.

Plan ahead

  • Practice active consent
  • Set up safe words & actions: Decide what means stop (“stop” is a good one). Pick something that you are able to say or do. I have trouble speaking when I am triggered, so for me, taps on the shoulder mean “stop and check in.” Other times, I’ve held jangly keys in my fist to shake or throw. At times I’ve pushed partners away hard with feet or hands. Stopping a triggering act so it doesn’t become a traumatizing act is more important than the surprise of a (safe) push.
  • Get cool masturbating with partners around so your sexual needs don’t depend on each other.

Insomnia

  • Take herbs: Passionflower, hops, whiteflower oil (aroma)
  • Set up a routine: read easy novels, do calming yoga, eat a little snack
  • Masturbate


Depression & crisis recovery: exhaustion, zombie state

Figure out your triggers, connect them to abuse.
Forgive and accept that mental illness sometimes limits what we can accomplish. Shit’s hard, be easy on yourself!

Things to do:
Healthy activities:

Anarchist and Radical Book Club

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A couple of us are forming an online Anarchist and Radical Reading Group with the idea of reading a diverse range of anarchist/radical books at a slow enough pace that a bunch of busy people can participate, and have little message board discussions about them. There’s also a section to find or recommend readings on specific topics. Books we’ll be reading include anarchist practice and theory, anarchist literature, non-fiction, as well as a wide array of histories and analysis from intersecting movements for mutual aid, direct action, and the dismantling of oppressive hierarchies.

Our first group read is Ecology without Nature by Timothy Morton

Anarchist & Radical Book Club update!

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The Anarchist and Radical Book Club is getting quite active! Check it out and maybe join in?

Current discussion: God and the State by Bakunin (full text)

Upcoming discussion: The Revolution of Everyday Life by Vaneigem (full text)

Still time to add to the last discussion: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by Graeber (full text)


Also, a website update.
I have been trying to find a friend to help me redesign this blog for like a year now, so it’s more navigable, legible, and pretty. Life continues to intervene as my friends continue to live theirs the hardest. So if you are good at web design and reading this and have some ideas & time to commit, I would love some help. You can contact me through my anon contact form or e-mail if you know it.

Book review: Green is the New Red by Will Potter

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Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under SiegeGreen Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by Will Potter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First off, hoorah for this book and Will Potter’s reporting. This is a critical living history, a first attempt to pull the last decade of eco and animal rights action and repression into one cohesive analysis. Read it for the narrative. Read it for the names and the individual stories, the Green Scare and particularly the Operation Backfire and SHAC7 defendants; for the explanation of US policy and lobbying record; for the breakdown of legal jargon; for the synthesis of many events into a posited whole. It is critical that we know these stories, tactics, legal proceedings, repression, and laws. At times Potter’s book feels rushed, and he sometimes dips in and out of present/past tenses making it hard to know what happened when. But that’s because Potter’s book is rushed. He has captured and collected an ongoing historical event and attempted to present it as completely as possible to an audience that is still enacting it. Activists, read it to help reflect on your own experiences.

This Green Scare history is set within the context of the post-9/11 War on Terror. Potter covers the language and rhetoric of “terrorism” and the ambiguity and evolution of that word’s definitions. Potter asks why the label “terrorist”– and its related sentencing enhancements– are being applied to environmental and animal rights activists engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, and to those who have caused property destruction but have never injured humans or animals, who went out of their way to ensure they did not harm living creatures. Why isn’t the word “terrorism” applied to rightwing ideologies whose adherents have actually killed people, like women’s clinic bombers and racist or anti-immigrant militias? Potter argues, “The [US] government treats attacks on corporate property more seriously than violence against doctors [i.e. George Tiller] and minorities not because of the nature of the crime but because of the politics of the crime. The government’s domestic terrorism operations are more about protecting profits than protecting people” (p.47). Potter then follows the money back to the machinations of agro-industry to insert “terrorism” into media reports on petty vandalism and into bills like the “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” laws that impose harsh sentencing upgrades and harsh (super max!) prison conditions on people convicted of non-violent crimes.

The book’s biggest weakness is its narrow focus; like his blog by the same name, this book lacks an intersectional foundation. Potter writes a book about terrorism in the post-9/11 era and yet rarely connects the demonization, surveillance, and repression of eco and animal rights activists with that of anti-war, Palestinian, and global, social, and environmental justice activists, and Muslim and Arab people generally. At one point (p.109) he recounts how a group of sharp-dressed, mostly (all?) white animal rights defendants gathered outside court were asked by a passerby if they were law students. “‘No,’ [SHAC defendant] Gazzola says, smiling, without hesitation. ‘We’re on trial for terrorism.’” A cute story, sure, except that it’s inclusion and other similar comments implies that, haha! of course cleancut white kids aren’t really terrorists! Doesn’t their appearance make the absurdity of the charge poignant and clear? …But where does that leave someone else who does fit the social construction of what a “real terrorist” looks like? Potter’s narrow lens creates (or enhances) a false split between those who fight for earth & animal justice and those who fight for human social, economic, and environmental justice. It ignores that these are often the same people. It creates a huge gap in his analytical paradigm, ignoring the connections between capitalism’s colonial exploitations of people and land. It hangs entire groups of people out to dry.

Potter did make some overtures to other movements vilified by the “terrorist” label in the chapter on prison conditions, though others have done a better job. Of those writing on the issue, notable is SHAC defendant Andy Stepanian, who was housed in a quasi-legal, ultra-harsh Communication Management Unit prison as a “balancer,” a white person brought in to decrease the overwhelming majority Muslim population held in these awful conditions (p.215).

The other major weakness of this book was Potter’s decision not to question or complicate the tactics of the activists he writes about. His repeated insistence that no animal or eco activist have “harmed” a human being rings false when some of their tactics have targeted individual people with stalking, economic and social sabotage, and direct threats of injury or death (regardless of whether they were carried out). These are not the same tactics as corporate property destruction, just as property destruction is not the same thing as non-violent civil disobedience, and separate too is publication of completed actions from publication of home addresses. Potter weakens his credibility by refusing to acknowledge these distinctions– if he really believes they are equivalently nonviolent, then he should address this issue head on and break it down for the reader. Me, I don’t see it.

Bonus quote from a Homeland Security report:
Animal and eco rights activists success “not only would fundamentally alter the nature of social norms regarding the planet’s habitat and its living organisms, but ultimately would lead to a new system of governance and social relationships that is anarchist and anti-systemic in nature.” (p.245)

[Note: I won a free copy of this book]
View all my reviews


Book review: personal finance for variable income

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See also my review of The Financial Peace Planner, a finance how-to guide for low-income folks. Yeah yeah yeah, “we vow to live in poverty just to spite what they’re selling” and all that. Regardless, as long as we live under capitalism, understanding how to handle money so we can meet all of our material needs is an important part of self-care and sellout prevention.

The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed: The only personal finance system for people with not-so-regular jobsThe Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed: The only personal finance system for people with not-so-regular jobs by Joseph D’Agnese
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Totally useful, though quite longwinded to get across a simple message. It’s a how-to guide for managing your finances (especially how to save money longterm) if your income is variable and unpredictable, like freelancers and people employed part-time or who work for tips.

The book had a few things that differentiate it from a traditional, holistic personal finance book. These included organizational tips and how to handle stuff specific to the self- or under-employed: you have to pay your own taxes (no withholding), health insurance, vacation & sick days, and retirement.

The book’s main purpose is its savings system for people who can’t make regular payments into a savings account. Instead the authors recommend:

(1) Save in percentages of all income you receive, instead of fixed dollar amounts. So instead of saving $50 every month, you would save 10% of every check, which might mean $15 one week and $35 another week. This way you still save even when you’re not really earning much money, but it never bankrupts you, and when you’re flush, you save more.

(2) Actually open many different savings account so you keep your money separated by purpose, instead of all in one lump. The authors figure that when you have no good feel for how much money you will have in the future, you tend to go through crazy spend and thrift cycles, getting super frugal between checks and then making extra purchases as soon as one comes in. Because of that, they feel that keeping all your money lumped together in one savings account makes it too hard for most people to sort out what they can spend now and what they should save for later. This is purely psychological– you could easily just keep track of things on paper. But the authors feel that since it’s easy to make many free online savings accounts nowadays, it’s more effective to actually create separate accounts for each thing you are saving for.

They suggest you keep your checking account at your regular bank, with a debit card and all that. Then you create several savings accounts at an online high-interest savings bank. These do not come with debit cards, so to access the money you have to wait 2-4 days for it to transfer to your checking account, making them still liquid but not available for impulse purchases. These also get slightly more interest than regular banks, but are equally secure (they’re FDIC insured).



They suggest 3 separate savings accounts to start:



- emergency fund (5-10%): 3-6 months worth of expenses saved up so that if you lose your job or something really expensive breaks (like a car), you can pull from this instead of a credit card. You set a limit to how big this will be and save a % of your income until you hit that limit. Once it’s full, you don’t need to add more money here, until you withdraw from it for an emergency. Then you save a % again until it’s back to its full size. It’s crucial to decide ahead of time what counts as an emergency: the authors recommend only pulling from this account to pay your fixed expenses like rent.

- retirement/long-term fund (10-15%): Choose a low enough % for this that it won’t be a burden, but actually go ahead and start saving for longterm stuff like a house or retirement now since even small amounts become a lot of money over time. They recommend you have an online savings account for this, but regularly transfer that money into a higher interest investment like an IRA retirement account (which they explain in detail). They don’t get into this, but I think a cool option might be to invest this in “socially responsible investments.” That term has definitely been co-opted, so I’m not suggesting you throw money at any random organization that uses that term. But with research, it’s possible to find things like revolving loan funds or other financial institutions that support good causes; your investment gives them some more capital to give out bigger loans, and you earn slightly more interest than you would in a savings account. For example, the Cooperative Fund of New England gives low-interest loans to housing and worker’s co-ops, and they accept really small investments. I tried to do some research on mutual funds that have really strict guidelines in what companies they invest, but I didn’t find anything worth recommending.

- taxes fund (20-30%): If you earn enough to pay taxes, and they don’t get taken out of your paychecks, it’s important to prepare yourself for that enormous bill by actually putting like 20-30% of you income in a separate account that you don’t touch.

After these three big ones, the book suggests creating more accounts based on your needs and goals. For example:

- [savings goal] accounts (5-15%) – accounts named by the thing you are saving for. Use the money that would have gone to the emergency fund, once that account is full. They suggest having separate accounts for small or regular stuff and large dreams, so you don’t end up never reaching the big dream cuz you constantly empty your savings for smaller ones.

- health fund – to pay for things that aren’t covered by insurance, if you have it, and to pay for everything if you don’t.

- donations (5-15%) – Separate out some money to give to good causes, campaigns, and charities; actually choosing a % to spend on this leads to donating more money overall in a way that doesn’t make you feel hard up.

I’m gonna repeat that a lot of this system is mental, and could be just as easily accomplished if you are meticulous about your financial records, keeping track of how much money you can allot to any specific part of your budget. That said, I’m probably going to try some of their recommendations: namely, separating out an emergency fund into a high-interest online savings account (I think I’ll use this for dream&goal savings as well, just keeping careful track that the bottom X number of dollars don’t count for fun stuff) and starting a retirement/long-term savings account; by starting a retirement account really early, I’m hoping to give myself less pressure later on to either get an amoral-ish high-paying job in my 30s and 40s, and/or struggle with needing to work forever. I also started a running Donations Budget, with a starting balance that I will continuously add to as a % of my income, and subtract from as I make donations; I’m hoping this will allow me the ability to send money out to emergency legal funds and stuff while having the peace of mind that it’s actually money that’s budgeted towards donations and not, you know, rent.

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[diario roma] i migranti

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Standing in line outside the immigration office on the outskirts of Rome (two buses and an hour later), under an awning but blown by the rain and the wind, appointment at noon and the hour approaching 3, waiting to be fingerprinted, to have documents triple checked and registered, legal resident status to be confirmed (“come back in 40 days and pick up your papers”), cold and a little miserable, thinking about migration. An ocean away from my monolingual extended family all clustered together in the same state in the USA, descendants–close descendants, in some cases one, in some two generations– from immigration themselves, their parents speaking three maybe four languages maneuvering across the same number of countries, now this family again rooted in a narrow geographic space, state boundaries, almost More

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so you’re going to Mali

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[copy of the e-mail I sent to a friend headed to Mali, West Africa, for a month] Music Bamako is famous internationally for it’s traditional music, but it also has a really fun hip hop/dance scene. Here’s a few videos I’ve kept links to that were popular about 5 years ago, from Mali and Senegal. A very different kind of music: Deski la Bombe – Bamako DJ Zidane – Guantamamo Aladji – Coupé Décalé Books Segu by Maryse Conde A saga in the style of One Hundred Years of Solitude– spanning generations and geography of one family, telling the history of Mali from Malian empire to the simultaneous invasions of Islamic traders from the North and French colonists from the West, and how these interacted to bring down the empire More

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Humanitarian Aid – Free Resources, Readings, Courses, and Certificates

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I’ve been studying up on humanitarian aid work in my spare time, so I wanted to pass along some free resources I’ve come across for people who are interested in international humanitarian aid and for those street medics and first responders who want to be prepared for disasters emergencies at home.  I’ll update this page as I work through more resources. Please post additional ideas in the comments so I can add to the list! Online certificate courses: Different Needs, Equal Opportunities –  Certificate course (free, online, 3-4 hours) and accompanying handbook (PDF) on gender in humanitarian emergencies, focusing on how to best understand, approach, and center the differing needs of women, men, girls, and boys within the population impacted by a disaster. ELRHA – List of online courses on humanitarian More

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Categorizing recommended reading on African countries

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Some members of the Goodreads Great African Reads group are trying to populate the Listopia feature with books on African countries. This is the ‘groundwork’– many of these lists are nearly empty, but they create some space for more people to add books. The goal is that when someone searches Listopia for any specific country, they get a link to both a list of books on the country, and a list of books about the region. If you’re on GR, please add to the lists! Africa as a whole Regional lists: * West Africa * Central Africa * Southern Africa * East Africa * North Africa Countries: * Algeria * Angola * Benin * Botswana * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cameroon * Cape Verde * Central African Republic * More

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Attn: Punks – Where There Is No Doctor, Ch. 15: Skin Problems

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Sometimes living that punker lifestyle means you get scabies. Or bedbugs. Or hives. Or pack rash. Or abscesses. Or ringworm*. Why did no one share this brilliant chart for identifying innumerable itchy rashes from the most wondrous book of legit people’s healthcare, Where There Is No Doctor (available in full, for free, online, along with a dozen other Where There is No [Relevant Medical Expert] titles) with me before I came across it during my epic Where There Is No Doctor cover-to-cover read through? This would have been so useful to me in that precious stage of life in which these biting, weeping, contagious and painful epidermal infections were so common in my life. I speak like I’m through with that stage of life, while I battle prickly heat, biting More

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From The Shadow of the Sun

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From The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski:

On the one hand, experience has taught me that situations of crisis appear more dire and dangerous from a distance than they do up close.  Our imaginations hungrily and greedily absorb every tiny bit of sensational news, the slightest portent of period, the faintest whig of gunpowder, and instantly inflate these sign to monstrous, paralyzing proportions.  On the other hand, however, I also knew something about those moments when calm, deep waters begin to churn and bubble into general chaos, confusion, frantic anarchy.  During social explosions, it is easy to perish by accident, because someone didn’t hear something fully or didn’t notice something in time.  On such days, the accidental is king; it becomes history’s true determinant and master.
p.78 (see also) Read more...

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2,013 books. I wish…

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Every year I gather together the best books I read that year to recommend and remember those that impacted my life or my paradigm somehow. Here are this year's, with links to the review I wrote of each. Best: * Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer * Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire * Where There is No Doctor (yes, cover to cover) Honorable Mentions: * Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis * The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker * Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery by Samuel Cotton * A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o * Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese * The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver * The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński * The Grand Canyon of the Colorado and Stickeen by John Muir * The Pure Heart of Yoga: Ten Essential Steps for Personal Transformation by Robert J. Butera * Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope by Beatriz Manz * Lonely Planet West Africa (helll yes) Yours? Read more...

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Jan-Mar: Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi wa Thiongo

Book Review: On Love by bell hooks

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All About Love: New Visions (bell hooks Love Trilogy)All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book as part of my commitment to Michelle Alexander's call to action in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander's meticulous indictment of racial injustice in the United States legal and prison systems concluded with a claim that it will take profound and radical love across race to dismantle these structures of oppression. The call to transformative love is based on her examination of the failure of abolitionist, reconstruction, and Civil Rights legal and cultural gains to fully transform the racial hierarchies in US society (change, yes. transform, no). A deeper foundation for change is needed, one rooted in love.

When I first read that, I was struck by my attachment to the idea that structural change was more important than interpersonal dynamics. Moreover, in terms of interpersonal dynamics, structural guiding ideas like consent, human rights (access to freedom from violence, healthcare, nutritious food), and conscious action against hierarchies of privilege and oppression were more important than something as wishy washy as love. We do not need to love each other, I deeply believed, we need only treat each other right. Obviously these ideas of justice and respect have a basis in love for humanity, for ecosystems, for life-- when asked my religion I have for years answered Anarchism, Permaculture, or at times veganism. There is an empathy and care built into these philosophies that enables and demands a certain amount of love.
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Prepping for CAR 2: Studying up

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With this post I want to share some of the stuff I've been learning about Central African Republic (CAR), but I also want to use the space to present my strategies for learning about a new country or situation, and also to explore a bit the nature of what we know and think we know about a place. 1) I like to start any examination of a place with: "What the fuck is going on?" For CAR, the indisputable best source of WTF-is-up news is Twitter. On Twitter, you can follow analysts who are reading in multiple languages from many more sources than you'd ever have time to skim and so get presented with a limited but still diverse set of articles about a topic. You can also follow actors who are tweeting their real-time opinions, decisions, and movements; from this pool of standpoints you can begin to form your own analysis. I'd include journalists and human rights reporters engaged in information finding as "actors," and I'd lend similar weight + critical skepticism to witnesses as to the narratives of those we think of as biased 'participants,' the protesters, politicians, activists, organizations, and survivors. Journalists and observers have angles, bias, and blinders as much as ideological actors, especially in the heat of the reactive, unreflective moments as one can find on Twitter. Check the #CARcrisis and #Centrafrique hashtags. Recommended Twitter feeds on CAR (view a longer list on Twitter):

  • @bouckap - Human Rights Watch observer tweeting live reports from Bangui and rural areas
  • @louisalombard - Anthropologist using her knowledge of CAR to write & tweet with nuance and depth
  • @drovera - Amnesty International human rights observer
  • @marcusbleasdale - Photographer who often works alongside human rights observers
  • @theprojectcar - Lots of aggregated news and articles on CAR news and the humanitarian situation
  • @jgmariner - Amnesty International, often updating on CAR
  • @astroehlein - Human Rights Watch director posting articles & updates frequently on CAR
Another kind of care to take when reading Twitter is of your heart. Twitter feeds anxiety: constant, endless, context-free updates stream in while the only action available is to follow the rabbit holes of hashtags and clicking through to new feeds. In my studying of trauma, one thing that stands out is the healing power of narrative and action. Twitter is bereft of both these things. It gives you instant and constant interjections of "what is" with no room to connect this moment's photo to the larger picture of "what was" and "why." You can gain some of that by following a subject over time, but you can also gain a false sense of narrative, as users speaking to each other create useful shorthands that further erase context-- the use of "Christians" vs "Muslims" in the CAR crisis is a good example of this (more on that below). And Twitter can leave readers plugged in to the moment but utterly helpless to partake in it, on edge but isolated and incapacitated. Use Twitter but be conscientious about how you do so; get deeper reads and get offline; connect, contextualize, act. Here, I would also like to link to some CAR-specific local news sites, but I haven't found those yet. I've gotten the best news articles from clicking links on Twitter. 2) Why??? After some gruesome human rights Twitter time, my head starts spinning with a plaintive, whyyyyyyy??? This is when I put Twitter away and start reading reports. Read more...

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Book review: Trauma Stewardship, Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky

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Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for OthersTrauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I brought this book with me to the Central African Republic, and read it by headlamp in a dark room after they shut the generator off for the night each night over about a week. I started the book about 3 weeks after I arrived in this northwestern town comprised of burned and knocked down houses, empty quartiers, and, at the time, two crowded tent cities, one surrounding the main church and its many outbuildings, the Christian camp, at one point some 40,000 strong when the vast majority of the town cowered under Seleka control, and the other the square block of muddied grass surrounding a primary school in the center of town, where the Muslims were confined behind armed guards after a pogrom five months ago following the Seleka departure drove them out of their homes and storefronts. Within this context of tired, displaced people my work took me outside the city limits on rural roads that hadn't been traversed by cars since the last Seleka pickup gunned it down the dirt paths, stopping to loot and burn and rape and burn, last fall. It's spring now, and I work with people who are offering meager help in the face of incomprehensible terror and hard times-- besides the violence there is the lack (of food, of seed, of tilled land, of tools, of clothes, of bedding, of anything one could have in a house that could go up in flames) to contend with, and it is just as hard.

The book is now in the hands of a 20-something Central African coworker who daily leads teams to rural villages, taking responsibility for their wellbeing in the face of constant roadblocks and hassling from armed men, who I think will be the friend I take away from this place in my heart in some many months from now when it's time for me to leave the people who were born here and will stay.

I'm writing this from a peaceful place in Bangui, the capital city where gunshots ring out across the night but there's fuel and food and places to go at night before curfew, to see other people and speak English, which is delicious. There are flowers and birds and a view of the Oubangui river and the Congo rainforest in the distance in front of me as I type.

Read more...

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