Anarchoblogs

WHAT IS ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR?"Anti-social behaviour means a wide range of unacceptable activity and includes things like vandalism, graffiti and fly-posting, nuisance neighbours and intimidating groups taking over public spaces."It doesn't include decimating communities by closing either public or private industries acting as significant employers in the area. It also doesn't cover foreign

CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-ONTARIO:BLACK FLAME BOOK TOUR: Molly has previously mentioned the book tour of Ontario and Quebec by author Michael Schmidt to promote his book ‘Black Flame:The Revolutionary Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism’. The…

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Urban Farming in Cuba

I was dismayed today to read the news that the city of Detroit is considering urban farming as a solution to the urban decay and abandoned neighborhoods that are slowly but surely taking over that once vibrant city.  Why was I dismayed?  Because it’s a brilliant, brilliant re-use of land going to waste and decay, and a movement that was already beginning to take hold at a grassroots level (no pun intended), and government involvement can only spell bad things for it.

When you talk about the difference between a government sanctioned urban farming project and a grassroots urban farming project, you really do start to see the inefficiencies that government introduces, often in the name of… efficiency.  Let’s say that I’m living in urban Detroit, and every day I pass by what used to be my neighbor’s house next door — now just a burned out shell on an abandoned lot.  I look at my own garden, already growing against the fence we used to share, and I think “how much more productive could my garden be if I just knocked down the fence and expanded?”.  Pretty soon, you find pockets of farms, interspersed throughout already established communities and neighborhoods.  The likelihood is that neighborhood farmer’s markets would spring up, and commerce and trade all of a sudden returns, with the proceeds going right where they are most needed: back into the localities they come from.

Now, compare that to the government co-opted version of that.  First, a quote that should help to orient you to where the government’s mindset is here:

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods.

[Link]

And there you have it folks, right back to the same problems of forced centralization that we have now.   Right now, there ISN’T a neighborhood store/grocery in a lot of areas – people are forced to get into their cars and drive to one of the centralized big super-chains – and in a lot of areas, this is a direct result of ‘urban planning’… a fancy phrase for the government regulating certain districts as ‘commercial’ and others as ‘residential’.  Mixed-use areas become rarer and rarer, and all of a sudden the sense of community, of knowing the proprietors of your neighborhood store – because they are, in fact, your neighbors, is gone.   For a great overview of how urban/suburban sprawl is the direct result of government land-use planning initiatives, read Kevin Carson’s piece on just that topic over at C4SS.

Forcing ‘districts’ on the residents of Detroit, like some feudal farm colony where the laborers are separated from the fields they labor in, is just ASKING for inefficiencies.  It saddens me, though it doesn’t surprise me, to see that yet again the spontaneous problem solving in a community is co-opted by government initiatives — after all, the more problems that we solve for ourselves the less we NEED government; and that scares the hell out of them!

The Left in Melbourne today is shit. Why are we always marching towards parliament, petitioning their government? Why are we always trying to speak to a mainstream that exists only on television? When did we lose faith in ourselves to propose real alternatives to our rape-the-world social system? The social movements, the parties, the discussions we keep having again and again never seem to be able to see beyond the world as it is towards the world as it could be… should be… will be.

The first issue of Melbourne Black, a new, free, monthly anarchist zine, has just been released. The first issue contains an ‘Editorial’, ‘A Few Facts And A Lot of Stories About Black People’, ‘Interview With LASNET’, ‘Anarchy Is A Fag’, ‘Education Matters’ and ‘Anarchy V. Marxism’. Printed copies will be available in Melbourne from Barricade/Loophole, MARC, New International, Sticky and elsewhere within the next 2-3 days. Otherwise, you can download a PDF copy from the Melbourne Black site here. For contributions and letters: melbourneblack@gmail.com.

Source : Street Art from around the Globe | Melbourne - black & white stencils (34), February 28, 2009.

Recently, I told a self-confessed socialist that I opposed ‘nationalism’.  Her draw dropped.

The same day I somehow found myself in an argument with a person who can only be described as ultra-nationalist over the topic of refugees and asylum seekers.  I told him ‘nationalism’ was absurd and I rejected it.  His draw dropped and he stared at me for a good 10 seconds.

Such comments seem to shock people, particularly when I inform them I don’t regard myself as ‘Australian’.  However, most people are then pushed to ask whether or not identify as some other nationality.  I tell them my ethnic/cultural heritage and then tell them that I don’t identify with any of these either.  I have no interest in joining one team or another, and this is what seems so shocking to people.

‘Citizenship’, for me, is just a legal document that has no real meaning except that it is a hoop erected by the State for me to jump through in order to do certain things.  It’s necessary in this regard only.

‘Australia day’ is ‘invasion day’, because that’s what it was.  I have no interest in perpetuating ‘Australia Day’ as a celebration of the ‘founding of the nation’ and a collective celebration of ‘Australianism’, when that ‘Australianism’ was founded upon the blood and bones of the indigenous inhabitants of this continent.

My understanding of ‘Self’ is all important in this.  It’s how I identify and clearly my understanding differs from the vast majority of people or I wouldn’t shock them when I mention it.  But why does mine differ other peoples?

We create a particular stereotype by defining ourselves by what we are not.  We then draw arbitrary lines to divide ‘us from them’ in order reinforce that stereotype and perpetuate it.   But little do we realise that what this creates is a bunch of ideas and nothing more, because these ideas are abstract and not based on in reality.  What makes a thing or a person the ‘other’ is make-believe.

However the damage is done. We have created an idea of what we ought to be, or what we ought to do to be ‘Australian‘.  Governments are the catalyst in this process as they mould it, expanded it and promote it because they profit from it.  It allows them to inspire us to band together, to play as a team for the good of the nation, to go fight and die for some concept of this shared, national identity.

Once a particular way of ‘being’ is created, a pressure is exerted upon every individual to conform to that vast collection of memes; to be Australian.  But in reality, that stereotype is false.  It doesn’t exist.  Remove ‘what we are not’ and parts of ‘what we are’, are removed with them.

It’s this that I oppose because the individual tries to be something.  They are trying to ‘be Australia’ when the entire concept of what an ‘Australian’ is doesn’t exist.  Ask anyone to define what, exactly, is ‘Australian’ and then compare it to reality and you find that it’s indefinable.  Thongs, shorts, shrimp on the bare-e, green and gold and singlets may be the ‘average Australian’ to many — and many people try to ‘be’ this, because it is what they think being ‘Australian’ is.  But all it takes is to look around you at the people who pass you in the street to see just how wrong it is.  Even the idea of Australian’s being ‘layed back’ and ‘larrikins’ is a farce.  They may be personality traits for some, but I know many who are highly strung, humourless and depressed.

So then, the individual in pursuit of that identity of ‘Australian’, over compensates.  They alter their behaviour to conform to what they believe is ‘Australian’, when really it doesn’t exist.  A person with black skin may see being ‘white’ as a requirement for being Australian and so bleach their skin to gain acceptance.  In the statement, ‘I am Australian’, the ‘Australian’ part is meaningless and the statement becomes, merely, ‘I am.’  Anything after that is bullshit.  This same thinking can be extrapolated to all sorts of thought processes that designate ‘us’ and ‘them’, and ultimately ends in destroying the ‘other’ or an individual fundamentally changing their ‘Self’ to gain acceptance.

Nationalism then, is simply a weapon for Governments who can increase their control by propagating this idea that somehow ‘our team’ is better and/or under threat from ‘their team’.

However, the biggest issue at hand then, is how to square with ‘positive’ nationalist movements which help to re-establish a marginalised or suppressed identity, such as indigenous peoples from around the world.  After all, these movements are positive in that they create a sense of solidarity among minorities and help them talk back to the privileged majority.  Nationalism re-establishes the oppressed as a cohesive unit and says, ‘we exist and you won’t walk over us.’  How could an anti-nationalist, such as myself, recognise, support and even work with nationalist movements such as these that seek to protect and established an oppressed minority as equals?

To be sure, there seems to be a contradiction.  But, I think, it needs to be recognised that such nationalist movements are positive and present a benefit to those they try to help.  That should be supported, but there is a limit on that support, as nationalism as a theory is not an ends in itself.  As a matter of course, nationalism requires the individual to bend and change the Self in order to accommodate it.  A person will over-compensate in order to gain acceptance and prove that they are more, to use previous examples, ‘Australian’ than you or the other, and I believe this is where the limit lies.  Acceptance is a powerful tool and weapon.  When a movement changes from re-establishing and fighting for the fair treatment and safety of a minority, to being one where the granting or removal of acceptance becomes contingent on the individual trying to ‘be‘ something more than themselves (eg, more hardcore than you), than support should be withdrawn.  Equally, when those movements call for the hatred or destruction of the other, support should be withdrawn.

No support should be given to any movement, organisation or theory from a point where it demands that a person hates their Self and attempts to destroy their Self for acceptance or where it demands that a person hate and destroy their friends, loved ones and supporters on the basis that they belong to ‘the Other’.