Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...

Chuck0 chuck at mutualaid.org
Tue Dec 31 13:46:34 PST 2002


Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Why then do the Democrats and the Republicans include more blacks and
>> other people of color than anarchists do?
>
>
> I suspect that an anti-government message doesn't always play well among
> poorer people who look to government for social benefits and public
> education - and some years back, to federal troops to overpower racist
> state and local officials. Yes, police brutality could inspire antistate
> attitudes, but poorer nonwhite people also complain about how cops
> ignore their neighborhoods. (And if you're afraid of the cops, you're
> not going to want to join movements that sometimes taunt them.) I have a
> lot of respect for anarchism but its popular image - not fairly - is a
> bit like the libertarian attitude someone once characterized as "I got
> mine so fuck you." For people who look to the state's redistributionist
> function it's hard to be antistatist.

I don't think that it is this simple. There are plenty of people of color out there who have libertarian and anarchist attitudes, yet don't call themselves anarchists.

For example, a friend here in D.C. has told me about an African-American woman nurse who liberated medical supplies for the April 16, 2000 (A16) protests in Washington. This person doesn't identify as an anarchist, but my friend tells me that she has strong anti-statist views. I'm sure that this nurse isn't that uncommon.

I'm willing to bet that as the social contract and safety net get further trashed in the U.S. that more poor working people will give up on the government for assistance. Perhaps they will organize like they did in Argentina or use anarchist methods. At least in the social democracies around the world they have good welfare states that keep the working class docile and placated. I doubt that the Republicans and Democrats in the U.S.A. will move in that direction until after there is widespread rioting in the streets.

I suspect that since many of you are academics that you don't understand personally how bad things are right now. Around 800,000 people lost their unemployment benefits this weekend. That's a huge amount of poor, pissed off people. The amount of homeless are skyrocketing and local municipalities are implementing Dickensian programs against the homeless. Shelters are stacking people three deep and shelters are being closed. The social safety net sucks. I tried to get food stamps last month, but couldn't navigate the paperwork, even with my M.A. degree. I gave up.

I think I have a long term temp job lined up now, but I don't count on anything after being out of work for 21 months.

Chuck0

------------------------------------------------------------ Personal homepage -> http://chuck.mahost.org/ Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/

"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free..." ---Utah Phillips



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