Vanguardismo
Recently on Stop Me Before I Vote Again, Michael J Smith posted a March Email post by Mike Flugennock, a loyal fan of the Stop Me blog. It seemed to be a heartfelt lament that here in the empire state we lack the vanguard seen in Bush’s trip down south, to periphery-land. He compared organizing strategies and anti empire strategies between regions of Aztlan.
Now as glorious as all of the fire and smoke confrontations are on a screen beamed to you by CNN of all orgs, flare ups is a more apt photo. I can’t necessarily attest to the numerical use value of these flare-ups but I can give you some of what I’ve seen in the vanguard of Olympia. It is indeed a frustrating time for twenty-year-old anarchists, separated from the movements we identify with by the flicker of another memory hole.
This ain’t Orwell’s hole, just the opposite. The one where instead of dumping the states excess information we get access to the world’s trimmings. Bit by bit visions of bricks and burning cars are flicked at us through the other end of the hole. The whole of the periphery and outright police repression. (A caveat, having lived in Oly long enough to have done my second year and seen instances of police repression, the heavy hands of the state clapping at gnats, this is very real even here in Empireland.)
Some of us at various points cannot resist but to scurry round our end of the hole and gnaw at these trimmings of the great global mass rising up. Some of us run round empty our pockets of local American change to trade in for a OAXACA RESISTE banner, stapling a bit of color on to our black backpacks and hoodies. Global solidarity is nice and awesome and necessary and all, but could we not have some of that shop local ethic back?
The twenty-year-old anarquistos of el norte wish for some hardcore luchando. Change, we ain’t got none, too busy declaring our ability to live outside mom and dad’s system. We can eat all the dumpstered food we want, be as vegan as we need to be, but when it comes down to some good old grassroots, we say nay, we really want the meat. We want that fire and smoke flavor. We wanna grab those guns and see our prey instantly done for. Bloody or not (depends on who you talk to), tearing it down or up or whatever takes precedence over building another in the backrooms and breakrooms of the nation.
I wish not to try and claim moral authority here, see? I struggle at this moment too. Where is the line between good useful foment and halfway ferment, old enough to foul and smell and intoxicate but too young for wine?
Now as glorious as all of the fire and smoke confrontations are on a screen beamed to you by CNN of all orgs, flare ups is a more apt photo. I can’t necessarily attest to the numerical use value of these flare-ups but I can give you some of what I’ve seen in the vanguard of Olympia. It is indeed a frustrating time for twenty-year-old anarchists, separated from the movements we identify with by the flicker of another memory hole.
This ain’t Orwell’s hole, just the opposite. The one where instead of dumping the states excess information we get access to the world’s trimmings. Bit by bit visions of bricks and burning cars are flicked at us through the other end of the hole. The whole of the periphery and outright police repression. (A caveat, having lived in Oly long enough to have done my second year and seen instances of police repression, the heavy hands of the state clapping at gnats, this is very real even here in Empireland.)
Some of us at various points cannot resist but to scurry round our end of the hole and gnaw at these trimmings of the great global mass rising up. Some of us run round empty our pockets of local American change to trade in for a OAXACA RESISTE banner, stapling a bit of color on to our black backpacks and hoodies. Global solidarity is nice and awesome and necessary and all, but could we not have some of that shop local ethic back?
The twenty-year-old anarquistos of el norte wish for some hardcore luchando. Change, we ain’t got none, too busy declaring our ability to live outside mom and dad’s system. We can eat all the dumpstered food we want, be as vegan as we need to be, but when it comes down to some good old grassroots, we say nay, we really want the meat. We want that fire and smoke flavor. We wanna grab those guns and see our prey instantly done for. Bloody or not (depends on who you talk to), tearing it down or up or whatever takes precedence over building another in the backrooms and breakrooms of the nation.
I wish not to try and claim moral authority here, see? I struggle at this moment too. Where is the line between good useful foment and halfway ferment, old enough to foul and smell and intoxicate but too young for wine?
posted by Assonance Not Apathy at 5:57 PM
4 Comments:
what do you really want your social change to do?
To (potentially over)extend your metaphor: whiskey mash won't get you as drunk as Jack, but... why not?
I guess the question I'm getting at is: what is the relationship between posturing anarcho-protest and real protest-resistance-organizing(?) that makes the posture a problem?
Perhaps people are just putting up the wrong facade...
I guess I'm saying that the whole black bloc brick break method is a tad individualistic for my taste at the moment. same sort of indulgence i talked about in my lj veganism post. no reason necessarily not to do it, but can we do more than teach by example?
More to the point is the fetishism of the international flare-up. I blame global indymedia for this one. We see the outbreak there or maybe on cnn or in nytimes, with different messages attatched. How cool rather than denouncement, detatchment in both. but neither does the work of detailing projects going on in the world to subtly get more than the blac bloc going.
the affinity group can get the email and show up but someone else can't necessarily get in or shit, be recruited.
neither gives the public with out developed critical eye anything more than an exclamation point. Doesnt work with anyone to learn to draw question marks or write our own sentences.
It seems like the issue is communication systems... what people expect to get from media, and how they accustom themselves to responding to the things they see. It seems like there is an over-broad genre of social action where global connections (NYT, Indymedia, cnn) construct certain types of protest as newsworthy (significant), and people (con/in)flate that into their conception of the genre of actions 'protest;' and seek to emulate-simulate those protests in their social space, but they really are just responding to the image of protest created in the media.
It seems like a little bit of the aftereffects of people's (and my recent) focus on media attention and mediated social change.. you have to conform to what people want to see as protest to have the action covered as a protest of something, rather than as random violence.
Then there is the school institution/ education function. The stories we are told are about these glorious individuals of the civil rights movements who inspired people to change on one hand. On the other we have the antiwar activism registered with the great unwashed mass who were pretty separate in their version from the GI's. nothing is said about the extent to which antiwar folks worked with GI's and that GI's worked with each other, possibly causing the move to nixon's air war.
but missed history aside. Our model of education is one replicated by radicals and progressives alike. Many of us expect that by modeling change others will follow or that by educating the ignorant or unsophisticated we can foment the rising up. throw in the yeast so to speak.
I think that by integrating ourselves and having tue and honest dialogue, not isolation on some commune, we will all learn how to write better question marks and sentences.
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