No Membership Required
by Jack Wylde
(from Green Anarchy #10)organization: act of organizing; the manner in which the branches of a service, etc. are arranged; individuals systematically united for some work; a society.
Peering out a jetliner window over the coast of Los Angeles, California, my thoughts drift into disgust by what disgraces my vision. Sustaining this burgeoning parking lot with all of its sewage, industrial waste and State-dependent citizenry is that which cannot be reconciled by even the most far-reaching pipe-dreams of liberal reform. Orchestrated squares glow sad and gray in artificial light. Black veins of asphalt flow with the diseased blood of civilization. It is Earth's very plasma that brings alive this lack-of-concentration camp, if decaying cement and blank stares can be called life.
Myriad boxes of all sizes upon the squares completes the picture as we descend. Massive amounts of razor wire contain and maintain this giant factory of which prison is a microcosm. L.A. is the future of everywhere slated for development. Cities and prisons are the logical endpoint of progress. Civilization's integral deception, Progress, the ultimate excuse for covering over wildness with order -- organization.
Just when hip-hop has transcended the false dichotomy of east coast vs. west, a new and equally false one has arisen. This time it's not Tupac and Biggie; instead-much too publicly known anarchists are fabricating the illusion of polarized scenes. These scenes are the same as other subcultures, except that police surveillance and repression create added pressures on our ability to relate well with one another and everyone else. Seasoned civil disobedience activists tell newcomers repeatedly that they must learn to work with people they do not agree with politically and sometimes do not like at all. "After all," they say, "we all have the same goals." This lie is the same one perpetuated in offices, factories and schools. Involuntary cooperation between people in order to serve some righteous cause cannot be considered liberating.
In my own process of discovery, I fell into what I call Organized Revolt. Any liberating idea for action must first be run through a consensus process. Ideally, this is a wonderful and non-hierarchical form of decision making. In the hands of fundamental pacifists or any reformist group claiming to have the one-path-to-liberation, it becomes a counter-revolutionary tool used to crush dissenting opinion. This leads to severe burnout, and in my case, getting extremely fed up.
Fed up with meetings where militants are seen as obstructions to consensus. Fed up with feeling obliged to work with uninspiring and draining cling-ons to the movement who have nothing to offer but argument and strife where strategy and action are required. Fed up with feeling too tired and overwhelmed by moderation and violence vs. nonviolence arguments to even express my "extremist" views. Fed up with sacrificing my passion for the destruction of this civilization just to not offend people or violate demonstration permits that were forced down my throat to begin with. I spent hours trying to relate to people I would never voluntarily hang out or live with. This got me nowhere but pissed off and unmotivated to do anything.
In response to this despair, I found a way out. This involved considering everyone else's opinions and ideas of liberation and, after careful deliberation, working and playing with only those people whom I feel solidarity with in any given situation. I create my utopia every day, because every day is all I've got to work with. Be open to other's subjective utopias; discover whose dreams you would like to find yourself in, and in doing so, find out who the players will be in your own. It is a voluntary collective effort at imagination and creation of our daily lives and interactions that will deliver us away from sub-cultural scenes and ever closer to our visions of liberation.
JUST A DREAM?Every individual is capable of contributing to the great anthology of freedom. Each of our essays can flow together into volumes of liberating experience until a mutually agreeable collective existence emerges. To rescue these concepts from abstract oblivion, I will illustrate them with an example. A group of people from all different backgrounds came together for a weekend to prepare an action against a large biotechnology corporation. People were invited only by word of mouth and no flyers or press advisories were sent out ahead of time. This gave us the jump on the company and the cops.
The preparation weekend was one of exquisite cooperation. Meetings were kept to a minimum and work was done by almost everyone. Political affiliations of the crowd ranged from solid pacifism to militant insurrection and everything in-between. The connecting factors were a mutual disgust for the company in question and an understanding that asking them to change their ways would get us nowhere. It was decided early on that everyone attending the action/demonstration would wear identical clothing and masks to provide solidarity among the group and cause confusion for the police.
The idea was raised that some members of the group may choose to engage in property destruction. A well known pacifist among the group made the comment that while s/he chooses not to take such action, s/he does not have a problem with others choosing to do so. Other pacifists and activists echoed this sentiment and the underlying feeling was one of camaraderie and goodwill. It was understood and accepted that we had diverse plans for the day, and in order to enact them, we all had to have each other's backs.
On the morning of deployment, a group of over 50 people split into affinity groups and the action was on. Some folks ran straight for the buildings and began spray-painting slogans and symbols everywhere. One group was on the roof dropping a banner. Others hung banners from highway overpasses, causing rush hour traffic to halt to a standstill as commuters pondered the demonstration. Still another group held up large signs while more people dug up the lawn to plant organic seeds in the middle of a mock biohazard zone that had been set up by yet another affinity group. The police did not arrive until everyone had completed their part of the action and everyone was together underneath the giant signs.
Three people were arrested, and as the pigs grabbed each person, unarrest attempts were made. A few folks were pepper sprayed and roughed up a bit, but the cops knew that there would be no easy mass-arrest and they let the rest of us go. No one was ever charged with the damage that occurred. Local newspapers and citizens were sympathetic toward the activists and there was very little anger over the destruction of property. From beginning to end, every participant knew what they wanted to do and they did it. Since there was no hostility over different choices for action, a true autonomous zone was created where all forms of expression became possible. This action, however small, was the epitome of functional anarchy. Individuals made individual choices and acted collectively to make each other's visions come to life.
The method of planning outlined above involved no creation of institutions or dependence on anything but each other and ourselves. All involved chose voluntarily to participate and since it was word of mouth, we for once had the jump on the pigs. Once activists and anarchists become tired of constantly defending their positions and arguing over tactical disagreements, the real struggle can begin.
ORGANIC REVOLT OR PUBLIC DISSENT?Revolt has nothing to do with the creation of alternative institutions or making civilization more friendly through reform. We can still directly aid those who suffer worse than ourselves. Instead of just serving food to the homeless, teach ways of sustaining oneself. Instead of just petitioning the fascist government for welfare reform, teach your neighbors to grow their own food, forage for food and medicine, hunt for non-endangered animals, collect and process roadkill and countless other skills that help extinguish our dependence on the state and our need for jobs and money. All illusions of benevolence within the corporate/state power structure must be negated.
The psyche is the final frontier of neo-colonization. We must stop believing in the necessity of electricity, petroleum products, money, work and industry. When any of these phenomena attempt to infringe upon or dominate our lives, we must force back their influence, for it is a colonizing one. Create and demonstrate methods for people to remove themselves from the system. The creation of our lives outside of the strict boundaries set for us is consistently usurped by the emergence of dogmatic ideological scenes. We must stop being activists and start acting on our ambitions for new ways of life.
Those readers who have the luxury of not ever being involved with a public scene or getting arrested are in an especially good position to create anarchy and spread the fires of dissent. Don't bother getting bogged down into trying to work with people who don't respect your views of liberation. Talk to your friends and families. Start living your life in the ways you feel are freeing and desirable. The obstacles that prevent you from living freely are the challenges to be overcome; TVs to be smashed, computers to be hacked, roads to be ripped up, powerlines and billboards to be knocked down, clearcuts reseeded with native seeds, farms let go fallow on their path back to wildness, schools to be eliminated, factories and mines to be closed forever, technology to be exposed and destroyed for the monster it is...start making your own list, but make it with care and with love for every child and every living being. Whether you want to dig up some concrete and plant food or destroy the institutions that prevent us from living, do so in a way that releases you and everyone around you from the ties that bind us to any institutions and ideas that are not of our own creation.
ENTHUSIASM: PASSIONATE ZEAL FOR A PURSUITOrganic revolt arises out of enthusiasm. Most organizations I have experienced left me feeling anything but excited towards their various structures. Once a certain level of bureaucracy is reached, (i.e. membership applications, party platforms, rules of order, long and tedious hand-raising meetings, etc. ad infinitum) rigid ideology and subsequent boredom drive out any creative newcomers who don't toe the party line. Serious study and skill-building do not require organization, only time and patience. Detailed plans for revolt can be worked out -perhaps more easily- without any overarching administrative trappings. In fact, organization is what usually leaves paper trails (electron trails vis-à-vis computers) that get direct action practitioners caught. Phone lists and address books have brought pigs many more leads than they would have if persons-in-revolt shunned formal organization in favor of voluntary associations. These associations must be based on a collective passionate zeal for the project at hand (which in our case means both mentally and physically unmaking civilization).
It has been said that action is the antidote for despair. Extrapolating beyond this dictum, it makes sense that the action referred to would be full of passion, bringing deliverance as far from despair and as near to true subjective freedom (outside the bounds of oppression) as possible. Earnestly discussing our versions of freedom with close comrades, new friends or friendly strangers (not pigs!) is a liberating experience unto itself. Sharing methods of day to day survival, trading ideas for scamming capitalism and strategizing and preparing for insurrection all build the affinity we must have when the walls of civilization begin to crumble. It is out of necessity that we learn the guttural truths of mutual aid.