Mutual Aid Begins With Us

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Mutual aid begins with us because while we may not have specific demands we do have specific needs. Our society and social relations have been hijacked for profit and power by Banks, Corporations, and Governments. Virtually all of our relations in this world now have brokers who demand their cut for providing us with little more than frustration, violence, and inequality.

Take insurance companies (health, home, car, accident, etc.) for example. A profit driven corporation inserts itself into our lives with the promise of health care, safety, and security. Basically, they promise to be there when we need them. That promise is a lie and when things go wrong after years of monthly payments we are left alone, receiving nothing or a small pittance from them. After which they demand higher monthly payments.

The same 1% brokers have designed and sold us education for which we went into debt. They decide which paper on which wall will determine our validity and worth as a human being in the ‘workforce’. They make promises that we will be o.k. if we just borrow money, study hard, and work in the field that will contribute to their profit the most. These promises are also broken as we get degrees upon degrees and end up eking out a living just to survive and pay debt.

And what of  Wall Street and the Banks? They are the biggest perpetrators of the fraud called globalization which is really just the financialization of the planet. These predators are not subject to the laws of the market or humanity. There is no exchange of money for goods and services in their world. Bankers type a few keystrokes and debt is created from thin air, resulting in individuals, municipalities, states, educational institutions, healthcare systems, and countries being beholden to these debt dealers with our livelihoods, our time, and our energy. They take no risk in the casino they have made of this planet for they are the house and the house never loses. They spread the debt to every class of society, every country, no borders or boundaries exist for them. In exchange for this debt they demand servitude. We are expected to pay them no matter what, no matter our health, no matter our employment status, no matter our ability to pay. And when a person or institution cannot pay, renegotiation is not possible only austerity. Meanwhile the Banking Cartels and their Corporate partners constantly renegotiate loans with each other or simply write them off as a matter of business practice. They have no moral obligation or ethical connection to their actions yet they expect us to have a ‘moral’ obligation to pay them their winnings. When threatened with the possibility of losing ever increasing profits they demand control and insist the behavior and modes of existence of humanity be subject to austerity, to their every demand. We are expected to satisfy their growing hunger with our shrinking wages and reduced access to capital as it has been hoarded by the banking elite thru the financialization of the world. Debt is the only access to capital for all but the wealthy. And the controlling elite buy and sell this debt to each other at their leisure.  The Banks, Corporations, and  Governments collude with each other to artificially suppress wages and increase debt. They claim to believe in the ‘free market’ even as they enslave that market to their every whim. They own our our society, and our culture.

The governments of this world will never solve the problem or help the people.  They simply act as a middleman for the Banks and Corporations collecting our taxes and forwarding the proceeds directly the most profitable Corporations on the planet  in the form of rebates. The same corporations who secretly hide billions in profit in off-shore accounts. The governments use violence to quell any real threat to the elite and their criminal antics. They periodically make a show of going after one person here or there for some white collar crime. But their real focus is the criminalization of poverty and filling the Prison-Industrial Complex pipeline with the poor and marginalized of the world. Governments have become (and perhaps always were) the swooning teenage fans of the Banks and Corporations. Our governments betray us, the people, at every turn in an attempt to impress and endear themselves to the rock stars that the financial elite have become to them.

And none of this information is new. There are many among us who are crystal clear on the problems the existing institutions pose. We have studied the histories and analyses ad-nauseum. Many of our crowd have even written much of those analyses. We see how life and our planet are nothing more than a piggy bank for the elite. Fuel for the profit motive. And many throughout history have also been aware of these problems with our society. A review of that history shows many examples of organizing and fighting this system. If we are honest with ourselves though we have only seen periodic small victories. The machine of capitalism with its violence, oppression, and inequality has continued to march on unabated with increasing nuance and sophistication. It is a resilient enemy.

And so we continue with our marches, our meetings, our analyses, our writing, our reading, our speaking. We look to the press with puppy dog eyes hoping they will cover us, hoping they will like us. The same press owned by the corporations we fight. We go to panels and speak with academic authority to an audience that already agrees with us. We even sometimes put our bodies in the way of the machine and get hurt, badly. Our hopes rise and fall with the seasons. All of these beautiful actions are necessary but they usually change ourselves for the better not society. We come together in groups with such passion, hope, and talent and move in a direction that seems promising. But unfortunately we are  inevitably torn apart by the same issues created by the institutions we fight. Issues of  privilege, racism, sexism, classism, academic elitism, and every other form of inequality we see in our world. We re-create what we fight not because we need to learn more, or understand more. We re-create what we fight because we are still intimately tied to the system that creates and nurtures that violence, separation, and individualism. The system we hate is still our main provider and even though this is an abusive relationship we need these violent institutions for our survival, or so we’ve been convinced.

Anyone who was at Zuccotti Park, or any Occupy site, or any common space where people come together and help each other, realize the power and hope that a common space creates. Based upon the violent repression of the state these spaces are also the biggest threat to capitalism and inequality. I’m not saying we need to occupy a park again (although i like that idea). What I am saying is that a common space that autonomous people come to voluntarily and work with each other to meet our needs creates something that can change more than our lives, it can change the world. A common space where existing institutions are not used, respected, or welcome. A common space where we don’t need a piece of paper from the government before taking action or performing a skill. A common space where we don’t need a degree from a college beholden to the banks before we teach another what we know. A common space where we don’t need a banks endorsement before we start a project. A common space where we acknowledge that we each have something to offer and we each have needs. We will not rely on the Banks, Corporations, or Governments that we are fighting, we will rely on ourselves, on each other. We will take the risk to create the relationships we claim to crave. We will take the risk to meet another’s need, and we will take the risk to ask for our own needs. This is the most effective form of direct action and it is what those in power fear more than any other. All other direct action is still necessary but without turning our backs on those in power and coming together in community we will behave in ways that capitalism is designed to ensure that we behave.

While we may not have specific demands, we do have specific needs. There is a project that all are welcome to join, contribute to, and participate in. This project consists of a community designing a space from which relationships can be formed and nurtured free from the caustic effects of capitalism. A place of mutual aid. You can learn about it, join it, and contribute to it here: Mutual Aid Begins With Us

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The Costs of War

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From Debt-The first Five Thousand Years by David Graeber

Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.

 

War is violence, War was the origin of slavery, War desensitizes the populace (the aggressor and the invaded populace) to a militant policing of every aspect of their lives, to extreme inequality, and to the abrupt deterioration of human rights. War requires debt to be financed and fought. Debt is used by institutions in many violent ways but none more directly violent than war.

In the recently released Costs of War Report the human, social, and financial costs of one specific war are encapsulated. This was a war initiated upon conscious lies and continued with deceit and policies that feign a desire for peace, freedom, and democracy while destroying the communities they claim to be defending. In short this is a large part of what is known as the Neo-Liberal agenda. This agenda is the abdication of all social responsibility by government and private institutions and that responsibility is shifted to the individual and populace. This agenda uses debt as a means of accomplishing it goals. This debt turns human beings into ATM’s for the government and corporations to be used at will. This debt is also used on a larger scale to enslave countries, communities, and systems of social functioning such as public transit, medical care, education, housing, and  basic human needs. Under the Neo-Liberal paradigm the sovereignty of any human or country is non-existent, paying the lender at all costs even death is the only imperative. And the lenders are very concentrated. They consists of a few behemoth private banks, the IMF, and the World Bank. These banks form a cartel that works together to accomplish any goal they desire. They are vile, immoral, and unethical institutions that ensure their income through any means not the least of which is touting the immorality of not paying debt. This debt they claim moral ownership over was created out of thin air by them and is abolished among themselves and between large corporations at their leisure but they do not extend this same opportunity to the public at large. It is not hyperbole to say debt is a lie, debt is slavery, and debt is violence. An in-depth analysis of the issue indeed shows that these stark assessments are rational and sound. So what can we the populace do about our own enslavement ?
Strike Debt
Rolling Jubilee

Egoless Structure

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Today’s post is a bit more personal than usual. It is what I am bearing witness to right now, what is transpiring, or perhaps conspiring. Now let me clarify, there is nothing I will describe in this article that I myself am not capable of participating in. So I do not judge, but I do observe and have no interest in pretending reality is other than what it is.

Anyone involved in politics (and this includes rabid republicans, devout democrats, retro-reformists, angry anarchists, complicit communists, savvy socialist, and absolute activists) has seen human nature at its worst. And at times some of these disparate groups may have seen human nature at its best. I choose to believe that the best in humans is our love and our spirit shining through in the face of any and all opposition. I also choose to believe that the opposition to this is the worst in humans, a result of fear and ego-basically that one will lose what one has or not get what one wants, be it material goods, security, or social standing. And I choose to believe that any human is capable of any of these behaviors at any given time. Our family, education, and culture, can and do inform our personalities but the intrinsic qualities I am discussing lie beneath our personalities and therefore are capable of transcending our own and others biases.

Now to the issues at hand, these are not new but age-old problems of human behavior. I am seeing self-appointed leaders who demand to be viewed as anything but. I am seeing over educated people of privilege demand to be viewed as infallible while claiming to be fighting for social justice. And by demand I do not mean overtly with words, that would be a refreshing change, I mean demand with their behavior.  The phrase, “what you are doing speaks so loudly i cant hear what you say” comes to mind. I am seeing people who have the ability to truly change the world and people’s lives let their own egos and feelings create a  narrative in their minds which precludes any resolution to a communal effort at peace. I am seeing why capitalism seems to soundly defeat social opposition at every turn with the exception of a few examples over touted by the left. I am of the left so I do not use these words lightly.

Capitalism out lives its adherents and its creators because the structures are designed that way. So when some ego-maniacal CEO dies, the structure is virtually unaffected. But when some ego driven self-appointed leader of a leaderless organization chooses to leave, the ripples of turmoil seem to grow until there is eminent self-implosion. The greedy, selfish, CEO wants power, money, and status and behaves accordingly. The leftist ‘leaders’ want to truly change the world into a better place. The motives of the latter are indeed purer than the former. And the former’s ego is much more toxic and destructive, not to the capitalist structure but to the world. So when the human shortcomings show up as they inevitably will in our social movements, why do they destroy them while much more toxic behavior in a corporation has little effect? The answer is structure. A structure is not inherently good or evil it is the aims of the structure and the result of that structure working toward those aims that determines if it is good or evil. Hence, capitalist structure=evil, very evil. But it also perseveres because it’s a structure and not reliant on the people who make it up.  So we who fight capitalism recoil from all structure because this one we fight is so destructive. Some people are destructive, yet we don’t recoil from all people. Structure can be non-hierarchical, non-authoritative, horizontal, and it can have knowledge base documents that capture the memory and experience of the structure. The documents and structure can be flexible. If developed in a conscious way it can survive any change in people that may or may not take place. We can develop a structure that is all of these things, what we cannot do is develop a perfect structure. So while we go on year after year studying, reading, discussing structure and refusing to commit to attempting one we are letting perfect get in the way of good. We as activist must learn from the past without being wed to it and develop these structures or continue to flutter about from one action to the next, one big organizing issue to the next, one internal meltdown to the next. And while this fluttering about seems appealing to myself and others at times, we must look to our history and see how effective it has been in the long-term at defeating capitalism, racism, oppression, violence, and inequality.

I write these things because I believe there is no chasm that can’t be bridged, if there were then why would I be an activist. The world, this planet, its people, all of its life, is far more valuable and important than our egos. If what we do matters, then bridging the divide between us matters. If what we do is merely to fill time until our last breath and attempt to appear a certain way while doing it, then there are many chasms that will never be bridged and the world will march on in the direction that we claim to oppose.

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Kimani “KiKi” Gray-Enough is Enough

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Kimani “KiKi” Gray, Ramarly Graham, Trayvon Martin, and on and on and on.

How many of these have there been in the last year in this country? Around the World? And how many in previous years, previous decades, previous ages. When will enough be enough?

I am referring of course to the murder of unarmed young men of color in a marginalized community by the people tasked with protecting that community and who are rarely from that community.  The same community our government goes to for its soldiers, for some of its police, for its administrative workers. The same community that corporations go to for exploitation, to spread debt. The same community the prison-industrial complex goes to for its prisoners and profit. The same community that is blamed for all the social woes by the puritanical out of touch conservatives who believe the delusional mantra that, “all would be well if everyone would just work harder and would just pull themselves up by the bootstraps”. The same community that makes those “bootstraps” so white owned chain stores and fast food merchants can claim that they did indeed pull themselves up by the ever illusive boot straps.

But this is more than just a community that exists in every area of the world. This community and those like it make up the vast majority of the populace of this planet. They are in fact the lifeblood of our planet. The mostly white, educated people in government  private enterprise, and even activism are vastly out of touch and not from this community or even a community that resembles this one. Many are college (mostly ivy league) graduates who come in and feel moved by the passion and depth of feeling in these communities around social injustice. Then proceed into a morass of history lessons, social movement understanding, and academic prescriptions. These communities do not need academic prescriptions but physical ones. They need to be able to physically express the rage they feel, to channel this rage into taking over their own communities from whatever government or country claims ownership over them. They need to be able to rise up and at least try something completely new and different without the influence of intellectualism guiding them into yet another refrain of a historical thread that is rooted in past failures. They are at war everyday, the war the rest of the world pontificates about they actually fight. They need people who want to help them by acting in this war rather than providing analysis and descriptions of the war.

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Anti-Capitalista

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As a society we spend much time in the minutiae of debate and research. This is mostly an endeavor to determine what actions will be most effective. But effective at what? The answer to this question is usually based on one’s philosophy, emotions, and beliefs, and is rarely affected by debate unless the affect is to solidify ones views.  So the result that one is attempting to achieve determines the effectiveness of an action and if the result is predetermined as it is in the case of Capitalism then reason is of no consequence to the conversation. The sham that is called Citizens United claims that Capitalist Corporations are people. If this is true we can quickly glean the character of these ‘people’ by observing their behavior. Capitalism is focused on the concentration of capital and leveraging that capital to attract more capital. Labor, human beings, animals, and the planet are discounted by Capitalism as mere bit players in the pursuit of wealth. A rational review of the effects on these ‘bit players’ reveals that they are fuel for a machine that has no heart or soul.

Capitalism’s most effective ploy is the recruitment of  humans into spending any and all disposable income (or even going into debt) in the pursuit of comfort and survival. We have gone beyond our basic needs for air, water, food, community/ love, and created a society that feeds on feeding itself, that is consumed with consumption. It is this greed, the hijacking of all power structures, the profit motive, and debt, that have built the solid structure of Neo-Liberalism/ Capitalism. This structure is a church and the masses are the worshipers at said church. The church is not going to change itself or become more compassionate. It must be destroyed. This begins not with tearing down the stones of the structure(that is where it ends) but with informing the adherents of the church and providing an alternative. Getting people to stand up from the pews and walk out is a necessary step as we move toward dismantling the building that has stood for ages.

DGR

Chavez-As the Sun Rises

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As the sun rises a small Chinese family rises also. They start off early in the morning to begin work at the local factory that makes shiny objects for the gluttonous westerners who will buy these products ad nauseaum. But before they venture out the door they don small cotton dusk masks to protect them from the horrific air quality created by this factory and others like it. The face masks are given for free although they protect nothing but an illusion. The toxic chemicals released by the factory are inhaled day and night by the residents. Being inside is of no consequence, wearing a dusk mask is of no consequence, this small family will most likely contract some form of disease and each member will eventually die for lack of breathable air.

As the sun rises the villagers in a small Bolivian enclave make the morning trek to retrieve water for themselves and their neighbors as they have done countless other mornings. But when they set down the buckets at the pumps that they labored to install they find a surprise. These pumps now have locks with meters on them. A multi-national corporation who has co-opted the democratic process of their country has gotten permission from the government to begin charging impoverished people for the water that this planet provides to all for free. The locks will be removed and the water metered only after the indigenous people agree to pay for the privilege of drinking water to this interloping corporation.

As the Sun rises the  fishermen start  the early morning boat ride to the fishing spot that belongs to no one but that lies within the boundaries of Palestine. They hope to earn their daily bread for themselves and families. This practice has been taking place for hundreds if not thousands of years around the world. There is no more intrinsic right than for a person to have the freedom to feed himself and family.  As the sun crests above the waters a silhouette of an Israeli warship can be seen. The warship approaches and demands the that the men remove their clothes and jump into the water to be retrieved by the Israeli military. At the very least they will be interrogated and humiliated. At the very worst they will be killed. Most likely if they live they will be jailed for some indeterminate period of time and their boat will be destroyed regardless of the cooperation they offer.

Air, Water, and Food. There are no more critical needs of a human being except perhaps love and community. But physical survival must come before communal interaction or perhaps with it. Each of these stories written above is true and ongoing. And each of these stories are a result of a theology that has its roots in the United States, but the church where that theology was practiced began further south. There was an experiment that began in South and Central America around 1970. The experimenters were not from that region, that region was merely the lab. The experiment which has now flourished into a full-fledged prescription for every social issue on the planet  is called Neo-Liberalism. It was hatched by mathematicians and economists from the University of Chicago, this group and its disciples became known as the Chicago School. Our current President (and all former presidents since 1970) is an alumnus of this theology. There were many  tactics used such as assassination, government take overs, complete privatization of sectors of government, using debt as a means of control. All of these tactics were aimed at accomplishing a strategy, the strategy is to remove democracy because it interferes with the overall concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the elite. There is nothing off-limits in this church, no freedom that can’t be stripped away, no need that can’t be denied, no lie that wont be told. In the face of this church there have been a few heroes willing to stand up and fight, stand up and say that people are more important than capital that government is not for sale by either the currency of coin or rationalization. Such a man died yesterday. The loss is profound, in that vacuum may another hero rise, in that vacuum may we all be that hero.

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Detroit-The Economic Battlefront

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If you keep up with the activist literature, articles, and issues then you already know that Detroit, Michigan has been decimated by Capitalism. It was not a bug in the system but a feature of the system that created the economic upheaval in Detroit. But just as capitalism and the neo-liberal agenda have been designed to do exactly what they do, the antidote works as well. The antidote in this case is community based organizing. Planning things from the bottom up rather than the top down. The antidote does not include determining how to distribute wealth upwards or resources across the globe. The antidote includes starting with the basic needs we all have (air, water, food, shelter, love, community) and realizing that all else is distraction, addiction, and feeds the disease of capitalism. Unfortunately, the antidote does not typically appear until the disease has progressed into critical territory, and even then the antidote wont emerge if the status quo of distraction thru pop culture, working for survival, and feeding ourselves with manufactured realities remains in place. It is usually only when the money is gone, the resources have been stolen, and the perpetrator has left the space ‘empty’ that the antidote begins to grow. Space is a critical element of the antidote  and not just any space but space that has been abandoned by the state and corporate thieves. In that space something magic can begin, In that space people come together. In that space we see a resurgence of human spirit, ingenuity  and community. That space is Detroit. There are countless initiatives afoot in that city to create new solutions to age-old problems. I urge you to research for yourself what is happening on the ground there. What you will find will amaze you and be prepared because as you find hope in the people who refuse to sacrifice to a system that would consume them you will also find that as they begin having successes the eye of capitalism and the state has been caught. This eye is a horrible menace and when it turns to focus on any success it will destroy or consume that success into its own system like a cancer. This eye has already taken the form of Governor Rick Schneider declaring a state of economic emergency which results in the city of Detroit losing its democratic ability to decide for itself. All fiscal affairs will now be controlled by the state. To restate this, a republican Governor decided to take over a democratic city whose population is 80% black. The state and corporations will use oppression, racism, violence, and any means at their disposal to fight for their survival and win. A city where people were coming together in solidarity to find solutions that did not include the state, capitalism, or the neo-liberal agenda was and is a threat to the very survival of the status quo.

Make no mistake, we are and always have been at war. We are engaged in the only kind of war that has ever existed, Economic Warfare. Our enemy has the resources, the experience, the institutional memory, and the drive of self-preservation to win this war. But we have commitment and love of life. While they fight for comfort or to maintain the status-quo, we fight for our very lives. We fight to not be consumed by consumption, We fight together. And when we fight together their weapons of racism, oppression, and inequality lose their sharpness.

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