Anarchoblogs

The government census has extended its reach way beyond its constitutional purview, insists Jerry Day in the above video. We should demand proof of authority from government agents before handing over our information, money, power or liberty to them, he argues. He urges that we ask census agents to reveal exactly where in the constitution it authorizes them to demand your personal information. He also wants us to videotape the exchange.

Why Even Open the Door?

But why should I even open the door for them? Why, when you have a choice, should you interact with government agents? By doing so, you only risk giving them some kind of justification for coming down on you. If their authority is nonexistent or illegitimate then isn’t it much safer and more consistent to simply treat them like any unwanted door-to-door salesman and ignore their notices and ultimatums? If you won’t give the time of day to a traveling salesman or a tele-marketer seeking to trade with you, why pay any attention whatsoever to a parasite claiming a right to your time and privacy?

No Authority Over Me

“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience & through rebellion.” - Oscar Wilde

Who cares what documents, certificates, badges, statutes or executive orders census agents have to back up their claim to authority over me? Is my signature on any of them? No? Then they have no authority over me. Not even the constitution is relevant because I never agreed to it. Not even the founders signed the constitution in the sense of a contract. They only signed in witness of.

Do Not Comply

Don’t pay them any attention! That’s my strategy. There’s no point in embarrassing census agents. If you want them to back off, just ignore them. Do not comply. Consider it civil disobedience in the grand spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Related Articles on the Census

• The Census: Vehicle for Social Engineering
• The census and the death of civil society

What: A documentary based on the late Howard Zenn’s A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States is going to be shown at 1919 Hemphill, a local activists headquarter.

According to Howard Zenn’s Web site, “music by Eddie Vedder and performances by Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh, Sean Penn, Rosario Dawson, Don Cheadle, John Legend, and many other great performers, will air in TV and be released on a special DVD. The documentary, The People Speak, shows the rich history of dissent in our history, and explores why it is so relevant and urgent today.

“The goal of Voices is to encourage civic engagement and to further history education by bringing the rich history of the United States to life through public readings of primary-source materials. Voices works to remind people of the eloquence of ordinary people, as well as extraordinary and well-known figures from our history.”

Attendance is free and can be reserved on the event’s Facebook page.

When: Feb. 17, 8-10 p.m.

More information is available here.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. - R. Buckminster Fuller

Instead of fighting government, we should simply render it obsolete, argues Dave Ridley in one of his best videos yet. For example, Dave’s journalism works toward making mainstream media obsolete. The Porc-411 service has superseded AAA he says. And carrying a firearm [on which you're well-trained] helps fossilize the police.

Which One First?

Dave’s really on to something here. What (quasi-) government institutions should we consign to the dustbin in our own lives? And how? What are the most powerful ones? The most vulnerable ones? The most pernicious? The most unpopular? Here are some ideas. I’d like to hear yours as well.

1. Police: Getting basic firearm training, practicing regularly and carrying a pistol is a great start. What about neighborhood patrol? Detective for hire?
2. Food and Drug Regulation: Produce your own food and drugs (see, for example, permaculture) and/or trade with others outside of government control to get what you need. This effectively shortcuts government regulation. I produce free range chicken eggs and trade with you for unpasteurized organic cow milk.
3. Road and Bridge Building and Maintenance: Fill in potholes, film your work and take up a collection. A more advanced example would be to save one of those bridges that has been practically abandoned by the state for lack of funds.
4. Social Safety Net: Form a charity to feed, clothe and shelter homeless people. Organize the unemployed to compete with the enterprises that laid them off. Form mutual aid societies.
5. Dispute Resolution: Offer your arbitration services for hire. Offer insurance against things that commonly turn out badly for folks.
6. Currency: Offer an incentive for customers to pay you in gold and silver. Convert your USD holdings into silver and gold coins. Mint your own silver money and help others convert, too.
7. Education: Homeschool/Unschool. Try to avoid or reduce property taxes, or any other activities that support government schools. Self-study and/or hire private tutors instead of going to a state-subsidized college, trade school or graduate school.
8. Health Care: Offer private EMT services with your own 911-type alert system. If you’re a doctor, offer your services for gold and silver at reduced rates.
9. Package Delivery: Here’s an interesting proposal for competing with the USPS, UPS and Fedex. Boycott the government postal system as much as possible.
10. Water, Electricity and Natural Gas: Get your water from a well and filter it yourself. Produce your own electricity from solar, wind and water sources. Heat by burning wood.
11. Broadcast Spectrum: Use and produce online media. Air pirate radio and TV signals.

We Can be Our Own Masters

Working together, we can enhance our own independence, build wealth for ourselves, achieve more personal liberty and free time and otherwise be our own masters. All this while weakening the fascist police state. Where do we start?

I talked about Patchwork Indie Arts & Crafts Festival so much that many of you unfollowed me on Twitter. Mea culpa; but I’m not done yet.

Here’s the wrap-up shot by my producer Regina Davis. What, doesn’t everyone have a producer?

In other nerd news, yesterday I attended my first Street Tree Seminar meeting. The meeting was held at the beautiful Santa Monica Library.

Street Tree Seminar is an organization dedicated to the development, health care and management of street trees in rural and urban areas within southern California. The membership consists of professional tree managers, arborists and associated organizations and companies.

I know what you’re thinking. Anarchy isn’t any of the above. Oh contraire mon frère, I was awarded a prominent Street Tree Seminar scholarship. I was made and now part of the family.

After official business was settled we broke bread and mingled. Arborists are fun! I met the nicest most generous people eager to teach me their trade. There were familiar faces, a couple of fellow Long Beachers, and to my surprise some were familiar with my blog. I collected several business cards and will be taking up the many mentorship offers including lessons on how-to climb a tree. I’m looking at you Stephen!

Admittedly I wonder, sometimes worry about what lies ahead. I am a casualty of the economic downturn, doing my best. However when one door closes another one opens. Street Tree Seminar is encouraging me to follow my passion. Horticulture, arboriculture, master gardener, TV, the sky is the limit!

The economy blows and if you have found yourself on a similar path I encourage you to live what you love.

With 4.5 million views and counting, the Pink Glove Dance is the result of a idea simple enough — and fun enough — that even busy hospital staff could take part in the project. And if they can do it, you can do it.

My ambivalence about the Pink Ribbon industry notwithstanding, the video works. It works not because it’s particularly brilliant, or features inspired cinematography. The Pink Glove Dance works because it’s authentic and it makes us smile.

On top of its stated goal of raising breast cancer awareness, the video is a great marketing piece for the hospital, the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. The video gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility, and the images of cleaning staff, cooks, lab techs and receptionists getting their groove on reminds us that health care relies upon far more than than doctors and nurses.

Now if a serious, bureaucratic hospital can put together a silly video drawing attention to their cause, so can you. Grab a camera, brainstorm an idea or two, and start rolling!

The BBC’s documentary A Farm for the Future is both shocking and encouraging. It’s shocking as it lays out how modern farming methods are doomed by their dependence on fossil fuels and encouraging as it explains how productive and efficient permaculture can be.

22 Billion Slaves?

Here are some interesting facts I picked up from the piece.

1. The energy supply we currently depend on from fossil fuels is the equivalent of 22 billion slaves working around the clock. My, are we privileged!
2. The average age of farmers in the UK is 60.
3. We are losing the technology needed to farm manually (as opposed to using mechanized tractors, bailers and such).
4. Plowing the soil destroys it by killing the living things within it that sustain its fertility. Mechanized farming has accelerated this process.
5. Permaculture gardening in a wooded area can produce enough food for 10 people in just one acre, more than with modern farming methods. Also, it requires small amounts of work.
6. Cereal farming will not be sustainable. But it can be replaced with nuts, such as hazelnuts, which are nutritionally similar to rice.

Highly Recommended

The 48 minute show is visually pleasant and quite informative. I highly recommend you give it a gander. The government is only mentioned once, at the end, where the narrator calls for government permaculture solutions - which is of course laughable.

My Strategy for Prosperity

My strategy for future prosperity includes moving to a rural area and setting up a garden, including livestock. I want to live off the land not because I necessarily think the world is going to end (though it might!), but because it is a healthy lifestyle. I want to enjoy the rest of my life close to nature and not dependent on vulnerable government-controlled supply chains. I want my son to grow up knowing how to provide for himself. I want independence, and liberty. What about you?

Local videographer and anti-fascist bulldog Dennis Gilman has posted up his much-anticipated video from the anti-National Socialist action a couple weeks ago. The video is quite interesting and in particular I enjoy the way it complements the point that PCWC was making with regard to the rally.

Unlike so many liberals and pro-immigrant movement movers and shakers, who would rather have ducked their heads in the sand as the racist NSM pranced about on the state capitol lawn (and in fact denounced the action in some embarrassing cases), PCWC wanted the National Socialist Movement to get some attention precisely because we wanted to highlight both the overall reactionary climate and rhetoric surrounding the "mainstream" anti-immigrant movement (after all, what attracted these NSM scum to Phoenix if not the tenor of the reactionary politics?), but also specifically to point out the congruence between the NSM's vile message and that of the "mainstream" anti-immigrant types. We at PCWC see no light between them. Dennis seems to have caught onto the same theme and he does a great job, especially in the first part of the video, of making that overlap in message starkly clear.

One week after the NSM strutted its sad sack stuff and then had to slink away in shame, one of those mainstream anti-immigrant groups had a rally on the very same lawn in front of the capitol that the NSM occupied. The NSM showed their ugly faces and were promptly booted to the curb by an obviously defensive Nativist crowd, fearing the association, which left the pathetic local NSM cadre (a far cry from the only slightly less pathetic "crowd of 40" from Texas and Cali that showed up two weeks ago) to shout and wave their swastikas and Hitler paraphernalia impotently from the sidelines.

Denouncing the Nazis at his rally, Jim Fairmont of the equally racist American Citizens United said, "That's a completely, you know, racist organization. This is not about racism, it's about law enforcement. Period." Sure, dude. Given the fact that these very same Nazis had previously found the anti-immigrant protests safe territory, one wonders if this confrontation would have happened had the anti-NSM action not taken place.

Aside from successfully checking the NSM's recruitment aim (something that would have gone un-countered had no confrontation taken place, as so many liberals had advised), there are other successes that anarchists should take from this. The new split in the reactionary movement, along with the fact in the popular imagination the so-called "Nativist" movement must now run from an association with National Socialism is a tremendous victory for the anarchist and migrant/immigrant movement.

And, as Dennis points out in his video, the fracture created by this action hints at the potential of fanatical organizing to open spaces wide enough even potentially to consume reactionary politicians like Russell Pearce. And it's more evidence of the usefulness of a fanatical politics in a state so overwhelmingly reactionary as Arizona. In this case, the NSM itself served as our fanatical foil, creating an all or nothing, in or out dynamic that forced people to make a choice. Now they can be held accountable for that choice and more than a few have egg on their faces for not turning out now that the action is widely understood to have been successful. The venue created an unambiguous space for anarchists to step forward and we will benefit as a movement because of it.

Consider also that we were able to persuade some of our libertarian friends join us and to assert their commitment to anti-fascism and to the traditional libertarian open border position. We may find that our allies may lie in places that, thanks to the limitations of ideology, we have not previously looked. We must also continue to look for fissures and other points of potential fracture in the movements of our opposition and then charge ahead into the gap. We can remake this debate if we try.

Finally, I want to point out one other facet of the action which as far as I know no one in the mainstream press caught onto, namely, the alliance of Native youth and anarchists in the streets. We've all worked hard at this and it was a real pleasure to take it to the street together and to see it deployed successfully. Together we took the battle to our common enemy and shut them down. This is a great victory and something I know we at PCWC hope to continue to build on for further actions. Not only that, but this is a validation of the strategy of autonomy and insurrection. As one comrade recently told me, we come together for specific actions and purposes. We don't build new, bulky organizations. We build affinity, get people moving and attack, attack, attack. Look for the weak spot and strike!

Thanks also to Dennis for the shout out to PCWC. Much appreciated. Below I have posted the video as well as a couple of links to the two essays that we put out in advance of the action, framing our position, as well as an analysis of the event by PCWC comrade Crudo, one of our friends from Modesto Anarcho. I think in hindsight they may now be interesting to review what we accomplished versus what we wanted so we can improve our efforts in the future. We must constantly consider the results of the applications of our theories. That's our path to kicking over this whole miserable system.

(1) PCWC announces the Inglourious Basterds Bloc against the National Socialist Movement anti-immigrant rally November 7th.

(2) The NSM offers nothing for the white working class but more exploitation and misery.

(3) Phoenix: Where Anarchists Pack Heat and Send Nazis Packing

• This Is the Modern World. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2009-11-06). This month's edition of Cato Unbound tackles one of the most interesting questions historians have: Where did modernity come from? Stephen Davies leads off with a revision and synthesis of several classical liberal theories about the issue; his essay has attracted a friendly critique from Jack Goldstone, one of the... (Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
• Queer Victorians. Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2009-11-13). It turns out that there was far more public discussion of same-sex conduct in the early Victorian period than previously thought. Perhaps not surprising that so much was missed: the earlier studies were based on press indexes and keyword searches. But most of the words that we use to describe homosexuality (among them, "homosexuality") date from the medicalizing discourse in the late Victorian period. It's not that it wasn't being talked about; it's that researchers were searching in the wrong language. (Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
• Uncle Sam Goddamn by Brother Ali. Kelly W. Patterson, Las Vegas Anarchoblogs (2009-11-12). This might just be the most kick ass song ever recorded. It's a show tune, but the show ain't been written for it yet. Hopefully, a team of writers somewhere is working on that. (Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)
• Re: Daddy Issues. cherylcline, der Blaustrumpf (2009-11-02). In “Daddy Issues,” Dennis Perrin wonders why we offer our presidents not merely obedience but also filial piety: What is it that makes Americans feel a family connection to the presidency? Yes, we are indoctrinated from birth about our unique goodness, our special qualities; and yes, the president is viewed... (Linked Friday 2009-11-13.)