Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?opg167fachei183

Opening: 

“The police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain’t got.” -Chairman Omali Yeshitela

Why were the modern police created?

Is is generally assumed, among people who think about it at all, that the police were created to deal with rising levels of crime caused by urbanization and increasing numbers of immigrants. John Schneider describes the typical accounts:

The First studies were legal and administrative in their focus, confined mostly to narrative descriptions of the step-by-step demise of the old constabulary and the stead, but often controversial evolution of the professionals. Scholars seemed preoccupied with the politics of the politics of police reforms. IT causes, on the other hand, were considered only in cursory fashion, more often assumed than proved. Cities, it would seem, moved inevitably toward modern policing as a consequence of soaring levels of crime and disorder in an era of phenomenal grown and profound social change. [1]

I will refer to this as the “crime-and-disorder” theory.

Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that the police were invented in response to an epidemic of crime is, to be blunt, exactly wrong. Furthermore, it is not much of an explanation. It assumes that “when crime reaches a certain level, the ‘natural’ social response is to create a uniformed police force. This, of coarse, is not an explanation but an assertion of natural law for there is little evidence.”

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?qwdjq7n24ltjdxq

Excerpt:

The spread of sabotage, its increasing practice, on a greater or lesser scale, far and wide against the domination of the market is a given fact. Burning ATM booths, disabling locks at shopping centers, smashing shop windows, setting fire to the offices of temp agencies and employment offices, the sabotage of the infrastructure of capitalism (high-speed railroads, dams, expressways, construction projects) … are offensive practices against colonization of our lives by the most advanced form of colonialism- the integrated spectacle.

All this is put into practice by individuals bored with survival as commodities (life reduced to economic imperatives and disillusioned with false opposition (more false and less oppositional with each day that goes by), parties and unions that want to manage our misery and integrate us into a mod of production that prevents us from any participation in the devisions that relate directly to us and that assist in enslaving us, mutilating every gesture of negation of the existent.

The spectacle writes the scenario and distributes the roles: worker, professor, student, housewife, mother, father, son, daughter, unemployed, police, soldier, artist, humanitarian, intellectual… the majority, individuals who assume different roles in the coarse of 24 hours, see their existence as still more terrible, assuming this is possible. Everyone with his neurotic-schizoid viewpoint will react to the stimuli launched by power in the way that was already expected. 

All social activity is planned in order to reinforce the spectacle, thus slowing down its unstoppable process of decomposition. Though we don’t want to hear the shrieking of militants of whatever organization, clearly we are not against the concept of “organization” as such, but against “organization” conceived as an end in itself, as the crystallization of any ideology, and as a separated organ, representing a class.

We are for the autonomous self-organization of the exploited. History has shown through two clear examples that the traditional form of the party (Russian revolution) and union (Spanish revolution) were nothing more than two attempts to manage capitalism and not to overcome it, and this is something that, consciously or unconsciously, everybody knows. In the seizure of power, it is not destroyed, but exercised: in the first case, the class of bureaucrats replaced the bourgeoisie, and in the other case, the anarcho-syndicalist leaders participated in bourgeois power, calling for the self-management of exploitation and alienation, while the base tried to overcome the relationships of production and social relationships in practice through the direct management of every aspect of their lives and not just work.

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?mt5p4cacrdilut5

Excerpt: 

May 9, 1974

Sisters and brothers,

Here is PRAIRIE FIRE, our political ideology- a strategy for anti-imperialism and revolution inside the imperial US. It comes out of our own practice of the last five years and reflects a diversity of experiences. This paper is not the product of one or two people, nor even a small handful of us. Rather PRAIRIE FIRE represents the politics and collective efforts of an organization. It has been the focus of our study groups and our political education. It has been chewed on and shaped in countless conversations, struggles and written pages. It has traveled around the country, growing, developing thru revolutionary possibilities before us. The paper was rewritten four times and collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground. The twelve-month process of writing PRAIRIE FIRE, squeezed between on-going work and practice and action, has not reached a kind of end-point. A cycle is done.

We undertook this analysis to explain the changes in US and world conditions since the Vietnam ceasefire and to evaluate the consequences of the Vietnamese victory. We have come some distance in evaluating the political situation, the priorities for revolutionary work since we began this writing. Now many more revolutionaries will need to shape and change the paper. The politics cannot be realized unless and until the content of the program is activated in thousands of situations, among thousands of people in the coming period. PRAIRE FIRE will be a growing thing.

We hope the paper opens a dialectic among those in the mass and clandestine movements; we hope people will take PRAIRIE FIRE as seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of the paper as well as their analysis of their own practice. We will respond as best we can.

Our movement urgently needs a concrete analysis of the particular conditions of our time and place. We need strategy. We need to battle for a correct ideology and win people over. In this way we create the conditions for the development of a successful revolutionary movement and party. We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society. Getting from here to there is a process of coming together in a disciplined way around ideology and strategy, developing an analysis of our real conditions, mobilizing a base among the US people, building principled relationships to Third World struggle and accumulating practice in struggle against US imperialism. 

PRAIRIE FIRE is written to communist-minded revolutionaries, independent organizers and anti-imperialists; those who carry the traditions and lessons of the struggles of the last decade, those who join in the struggles of today. PRAIRIE FIRE is written to all sisters and brothers who are engaged in armed struggle against the enemy. It is written to prisoners, women’s groups, collectives, study groups, workers’ organizing committees, communes, GI organizers, consciousness-raising groups, veterans, community groups and revolutionaries of all kinds; to all who will read, criticize and bring its content to life in practice. It is written as an argument against those who oppose action and hold back the struggle.

PRAIRIE FIRE is based on a belief that the duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution. This is not an abstraction. It means that the revolutionaries must make a profound commitment to the future of humanity, apply our limited knowledge and experience to understand an ever-changing situation, organize the masses of people and build the fight. It means that struggle and risk and hard work and adversity will become our way of life, that the only certainty will be constant change, that the only possibilities are victory or death.

We have only begun. At this time, the unity and consolidation of anti-imperialists forces around a revolutionary program is an urgent and pressing strategic necessity. PRAIRIE FIRE is offered as a contribution to this unity of action and purpose. Now it is in your hands.

Bernadine Dohrn

Jeff Jones

Billy Ayers

Celia Sojourn

For the Weather Underground

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?bb5ud1jhf52qun2

Excerpt:

Caught In the Web of Deception

The technological system for the dissemination of ideology, the media (I use the word media to refer specifically to this system in its totality, not to refer to specific tools it used to carry out its function, since some of these tools can be used in different manner, even against this function), is an inherent part of the power structure and, therefore, an enemy of all rebellion and of every attempt to create free life.

Th media plays a specific role in the power structure, a role that, in a democratic state, becomes not only essential, but also central to the functioning of power. But before continuing, it is necessary to confront the illusions many have about democracy. While it is true democracy can merely mean a decision making process which offers all involved a say or a vote in each decision (why this is incompatible with anarchy is a subject best dealt with at another time fore the sake of brevity), in the present era, democracy is also and more essentially a system of state and social power which maintains social peace by allowing the expression of the broadest possible spectrum of opinion precisely because opinions are basically substances. Opinions are ideas that have been drained of all vitality. Separated from life and from any projectile basis, they have become harmless blathering that ultimately strengthens the democratic state by making it appear tolerant and open as compared to feudal or dictatorial states. 

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?phumsr44na99cpr

Excerpt:

“Either you respect people’s capacities to think for themselves, to govern themselves, to creatively devise their own best ways to make decisions, to be accountable, to relate, problem solve, break-down isolation and commune in a thousand different ways… OR: you-disrespect them. You dis-respect ALL of us.” - Ashanti Alston

Many classical anarchist regard anarchism as a body of elemental truths that merely needed to be revealed to the world and believe people would become anarchists once exposed to the irresistible logic of the idea. This is one of the reasons they tended to be didactic.

Fortunately the lived practice of the anarchist movement is much richer than that. Few “convert” in such a way: it is much more common for people to embrace anarchism slowly, as they discover that it is relevant to their lived experience and amendable to their own insights and concerns. 

The richness of the anarchist tradition lay precisely in the long history of encounters between non-anarchist dissidents and the anarchist framework that we inherited from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anarchism has grown through such encounters and now confronts social contradictions that were previously marginal to the movement. For example, a century ago the struggle against patriarchy was a relatively minor concern for most anarchists and yet it is now widely accepted as an integral part of our struggle against domination.

It is only within the last 10 or 15 years that anarchists in North America have begun to seriously explore what it means to develop an anarchism that can both fight white supremacy and articulate a positive vision of cultural diversity and cultural exchange. Comrades are working hard to identify the historical referents of such a task, how our movement must change to embrace it, and what a truly anti-racist anarchism might look like. 

The following piece by IAS board member Ashanti Alston explores some of these questions. Alston, who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, describes his encounter(s) with anarchism (which began while he was incarcerated for activities related to the Black Liberation Army). He touches upon some of the limitations of older visions of anarchism, the contemporary relevance of anarchism to black people, and some of the principles necessary to build a new revolutionary movement. 

Note: 1) A Digital Read 2) in comic book form

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?wa3b010b79b74s6

Excerpt: 

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?tyynmokyomy

Opening: 

“I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy.” -Audre Lorde

What lies between the lines are the things that women of color do not tell each other. There are reasons for our silences: the change in generation between mother and daughter, the language barriers between us, or sexual identity, the educational opportunities we had or missed, the specific cultural history of our race, the physical conditions of our bodies and our labor. 

As Audre Lorde states in the closing piece of the preceding section, “Difference is the raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” It is critical now that Third World feminists begin to speak directly to the specific issues that separate us. We cannot afford to throw ourselves haphazardly under the rubric of “Third World Feminism” only to discover later that there are serious differences between us which could collapse our dreams, rather than fuse alliances.

As Third World women, we understand the importance, yet limitations of race ideology to describe our total experience. Cultural differences get subsumed when we speak of “race” as an isolated issue: where does the Black Puerto Rican sister stake out her alliance in this country, with the Black community or the Latin? And color alone cannot define her status in society- How do we compare the struggles of the middle class Black woman with those of the light-skinned Latina welfare mother? Further, how each of us perceives our ability to be radical against this oppressive state is largely affected by our economic privilege and our specific history of colonization in the U.S. Some of us were brought here centuries ago as slaves, others had our birthright taken away from us, some of us are daughters and granddaughters of immigrants, others of us are newly immigrated to the U.S.

Repeated throughout this section is each woman’s desire to have all her sisters of color actively identified and involved as feminists. One of the biggest sources of separation among women of color in terms of feminism has been homophobia. This fear that we [whatever our sexuality] breathe in every day in our communities never fully allows us to feel invulnerable to attack on our own streets, and sometimes even in the homes we grew up in (let alone in the white man’s world). So often it is the fear of lesbianism which causes many of us to feel our politics and passion are being ignored or discounted by other Third World people. “There’s nothing to be compared with how you feel when you’re cut cold by your own…” (Barbra Smith). But we refuse to make a choice between our cultural identity and sexual identity, between our race and our femaleness. We are not turning our backs on our people nor on our selves. We even claim lesbianism as an “act of resistance” (Clarke) against the same forces that silence us as people of color.

We write letters home to Ma. 

Surfacing from these pages again and again is the genuine sense of loss and pain we feel when we are denied our home because of our desire to free ourselves as specifically female persons. So, we turn to each other for strength and sustenance. We write letters to each other incessantly. Across a kitchen table, Third World feminist strategy is plotted. We talk long hours into the night. It is when this midnight oil is burning that we secretly reclaim our goddesses and our female identified cultural tradition. Here we put Billie Holiday back into the hands and hearts of the women who understand her.

The difference that we have feared to mention because of our urgent need for solidarity with each other begins to be spoken to on these pages, but also the similarities that so often go unrecognized- that a light-skinned Latin woman can feel “at home” and “safe” (Morales) among her Afro-American sisters- that among many of us there is a deep-rooted identification and affinity which we were not, logically, supposed to feel towards each other living in segregated white-america. 

We turn to each other to make family and even there, after the exhilaration of our fist discovery of each other subsides, we are forced to confront our own lack of resources as Third World women living in the U.S. Without money, without institutions, without one community center to call our own we so often never get as far as dreamed while plotting in our kitchens. We disappoint each other. Sometimes we even die on each other. How to reconcile with the death of a friend the death of a spirit? 

We begin by speaking directly to the deaths and disappointments. Here we begin to fill in the spaces of silence between us. For it is between these seemingly irreconcilable lines- the class lines, the political correct lines, the daily lines we run down to each other to keep difference and desire at a distance- that the truth of our connection lives. 

note: A Printed & Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?0ydbuo9mchh7tru

Description: 

We in the US have been too timid for too long. We are afraid of the cops. We are afraid of losing our jobs or getting expelled from school. No one wants to take risks- so protests are poorly attended and ineffective. Peaceful marches or rallies reduce us to passive observers of what is supposed to be our own activity. We are told to express our anger and frustration by shouting or chanting but otherwise, we are asked to exercise restraint. 

At the UCSC walkout on Sept 24, protestors chanted and carried signs, but they crossed the street only when the ‘walk’ sign was lit. The striking union had a picket line but did not actively prevent people from crossing that line. They  knew that most unions at the UC have contracts which explicitly force their members to cross the picket lines of other unions. 

In Berkeley, at the general assembly held on the same day, protestors were asked: ‘what do you want to do next?’ Nit they were never asked the obvious question- ‘what do you want to do right now?’ Why not decide on an immediate course of action and do it? Organizers complain they are losing members with each successive meeting; they seem to believe that meeting is an end in itself!

This wall of passivity can only be dismantled through action. But equally, we have to avoid the temptation of becoming ‘activists’. On Sept 17, activists interrupted a meeting of the UC Board of Regents. They shouted at Mark Yudof, refused to quiet down and were arrested by the cops. These sacrificial actions are disruptive- but only momentarily. Activists depend on the media to publicize their grievances, but to gain the attention of the media, the have to provoke the administration into an embarrassing confrontation. Administrators are not stupid.  They know how to neutralize these actions: they simply avoid confrontation. After the activists were dragged from the room Yudof said, ‘The students ought to be angry about the fee increases. I’m angry about it too.’

These are the problems we face: not only the cuts- not only the crisis which caused the cuts- but the ineffectiveness of our means of fighting them. We need to build a movement, but we have not been able to do so. People will only join a movement if it has the potential to change something, but a movement will only change something if people have already joined it. So everyone does what is in their own best interests: they ignore the protests and get on with their lives. Better to try to find a new job than waste time failing to get your old one back. The problem is not that people lack a ‘consciousness’ of their own interests.

It is the activists who fail to understand…

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://zinelibrary.info/files/firetotheprisons9.pdf

Description:

This publication as explained in every introduction of this magazine is a publication that intends to link different struggles, forms of resistance, and common frustration to a broader enemy. That common enemy is the entirety of the world that mediates, manipulates, and keeps us in order or controls our everyday relations and experiences; an enemy that controls our everyday lives. The state, capitalism, industry, and all institutions that have us captured, are certainly a few of the main building blocks lying at the base of the totality of what we understand as “life” in this miserable today. 

We look to achieve a few possibilities with this project. One of which is to expose struggles happening here, no, and around the world; to the best of our ability, and extend of our printing resources. We try to report and expose resistance by a repression to struggles engaged in conflict with everyday conditions that directly result from the rule of capitalism, industry, the state; or the global civilization mediating the world today. 

This magazine is used as a celebration for the strikes and wounds against the infrastructure  of this common enemy, and reflection on the social ruptures and popular discontent arising within the normalcy or stability of its order.

We are dedicated to compiling in-depth news and awareness of individuals or groups the state is trying to victimize and silence, due to there being a perceived threat in their displays of revolutionary opposition. We hope to present a struggle that is invisible and everywhere, and most importantly does not collapse once one or two people are arrested; only grows stronger and more enraged…

Note: Both Printed & Digital Read (options at link) 

Link:ACCIDENT or ATTACK?: On Praxis

Description:

For those interested in: social war, insurrection, Verilio, theory, and destruction…

“Accidents do not exist. To believe that accidents come out of nowhere is to be blind to the nature of the Substance from which accidents arise.”

“To invent systems of domination is to invent those who violently fight to destroy them.”

“Creation or collapse, the accident is an unconscious oeuvre, an invention in the sense of uncovering what was hidden, just waiting to happen.” -paul verilio