NYC: Occupy Wall St. Protest, a Day 1 Recap, #occupywallstreet

Thousands of people converged on the financial district in downtown Manhattan on Saturday to protest the influence of Wall St. on our nation's politics.  Billed as the US Day of Rage by organizers, the protesters' united being one single, simple demand: free and fair elections.  An excerpt from the original call to action:

Legitimate government is born of the self-interest and will of the people expressed by its citizens in free and fair elections. It does not spring from a tyranny of special interests, patronage, or a system or ideology that runs counter to the aims of life.

The institutions of government were designed to protect the principles of our democratic republic and to serve the will of citizens.

Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, use money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce.

Free and fair elections inspire good citizenship and public service, because they engage the intelligence and genuine good will of the American people.

Protesters can be found on Wall St. on any given day of the week. And large demonstrations against the big banks and the undue influence of corporate interests take place in the financial district on a fairly regular basis.  The Occupy Wall St. protests are different, however.  The protesters have not gone home.  In fact, they are still there right now.  They are streaming their assemblies live if you want to check in.  Here are some of my pics from the day. 

Their immediate tactical goal is to occupy a space in the financial district and hold it.  None of their actions have been technically permitted, in the sense that no permits were obtained ahead of the protest action, as would normally be the case for a fairly large protest and demonstration.  But, aside from a couple tense moments over the course of the day, the NYPD appear to have been fairly accommodating to the protesters thus far, though they did shut down all the streets immediately surrounding the New York Stock Exchange to all traffic except for those who live or work in the area.

Around midday protesters gathered at Bowling Green for an impromptu rally with an open podium.  By 2pm, a few thousand people had assembled.  I happened to catch Rev. Billy, the Green Party's candidate for NYC mayor in 2009, speaking to a small group of independent media reporters who asked him about everything from the relationship between the major parties and the big banks, environmental policy, manufacturing and even the two-party duopoly.  I'm sure you can guess which question I asked:



At around 3pm, the assembled crowd marched from Bowling Green up Broadway to Zuccotti Park, also known as Liberty Plaza, in the shadow of the World Trade Center site.

Excelsior at the WTC site, from the NW corner of Liberty Plaza

At Liberty Plaza, folks milled about for a while, talking and chanting.  A quick general assembly was held, and people then broke up into smaller discussion groups.  So who was in the crowd? There were people from all over the country and, of course, New York City, which means that there were also people from all over the world.  There were no mass-produced signs, as one can often find at large demonstrations, a potential indicator that this was not a top-down organizational affair.  In terms of political ideology, there were anarchists, socialists, libertarians, Greens, Ron Paul supporters, Independents, and a fair number of folks from Anonymous in Guy Fawkes masks.  One Anon said he was a construction worker who helped dig out the Ground Zero site following 9/11, if I heard correctly.  He spoke about civil liberties and support for Ground Zero workers in one of the discussion groups at Liberty Plaza:

An Anon addresses a discussion group.

Discussion in the groups inevitably turned to the topic of what to do next.  Many decided to hold a spontaneous march back down to Wall St.  As Wall St. had already been walled off by the NYPD, the chaotic march snaked through the financial district.  The most tense moments of the march took place when protesters were blocked from heading up toward the stock exchange at the corner of Wall St. and William St.  That also just happens to be where Cipriani Wall St. is located.  Partiers at the posh restaurant headed to the balcony to see what all the ruckus down on the street was.  In formal attire, with more than a couple holding martini glasses, they were greeted with boos and chants from the crowd.  Eventually, the march made its way back up to Liberty Plaza.  People hung out until about 7pm, when another general assembly was called.  Hundreds of people remained in the park as darkness fell.

The assembly was very well-run, especially given the fact that there were hundreds of people there, and no amplification was allowed since there were no permits.  A handful of organizers moderated and facilitated the discussion within the large crowd using a consensus-based discussion and decision-making model.  People were fairly disciplined, maintaining both order and high spirits.  They discussed everything from organizational strategy to sleeping arrangements to NYC laws governing political protest on the streets, to media strategy, potential demands, strategy and tactics moving forward and so on.  I'm sure you can find it all on Twitter under #occupywallstreet, if you're so inclined. 

People gathered for the evening general assembly.

Two incidents in particular highlighted the discipline of the assembled crowd.  At one point, none other than Jimmy McMillan, former NY gubernatorial candidate for the Rent is Too Damn High Party, appeared at the edge of the assembly accompanied by two others.  Folks were initially excited about his appearance, but it quickly became apparent that he wanted to go "up on stage" and speak to the group.  What he didn't understand was that there was no "stage", that the people standing in the middle of the group were only facilitating the discussion for the rest.  People basically told McMillan to back off, yelling that if he wanted to address the group, he would have to follow the procedures that had been set out at the beginning.  He opted to leave instead, apparently.  A similar incident happened a bit later on when a local reporter from ABC News disrupted the proceedings by walking to the middle of the crowd with a camera and microphone.  They were shouted down and told to get in line if they wanted to talk.  They opted instead to leave the assembly and ended up interviewing a number of folks on the edge of the crowd.  

By the end of the general assembly, the group had decided to pursue a non-confrontational posture toward the police, and to march on Wall St. if they were ordered to disperse from Liberty Plaza before the night was through.  They plan on continuing their protests tomorrow and into the workweek on Monday.  Many state that they are prepared to maintain the protest for days, weeks and even months.  There were probably well over a thousand people still there Saturday night.  I'll head back down in the coming days to see what's up. Stay tuned.

I left the protest at around 10pm, shortly after the nearly three hour assembly broke up into smaller working working groups focused on practical and organizational concerns such as acquiring bedding and food, developing media and communications strategy, and so on.  You might be wondering what I did all day between the marches and assemblies.  I was handing out copies of the first and second issues of Third Party Independent, which you can find embedded below:

The Tea Party Movement and the Coming Insurrection: Conservative Anarcho-Communism?

Reflecting on the controversy surrounding Glenn Beck's global conspiracy theory of "the coming insurrection," one might reasonably wonder about the source of his obsession with the insurrectionary anarcho-communist manifesto of the same name.  Might it not stem from a narcissism of small differences?  The latter term was coined by Sigmund Freud to describe the inclination to aggression between relatively similar groups.  Freud writes in Cilvilization and Its Discontents:

I once discussed the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other . . .  I gave this phenomenon the name of "the narcissism of minor differences" . . .

As I have noted here before, for a supposedly conservative movement, tea party sympathizers and organizers draw inspiration from, and model their activities upon, radical left-wing groups with surprising frequency.  From December 2009:

More than one Red State diarist has suggested that Republicans follow the infiltrationist strategy allegedly implemented by radical socialists in the 1970's. Glenn Beck has stated that the people of the United States need to begin "thinking like the Chinese." And none other than Rush Limbaugh has argued that conservatives should emulate the "radical left."

In this vein, one might also reflect upon the conservative zeal for the works of Saul Alinsky.  Nonetheless, as an active organizer within the tea party movement, Glenn Beck's apparent obsession with The Coming Insurrection is curious to say the least.  But given that conservative sympathizers with the tea party movement have actively and admittedly modeled their efforts on those of "the radical left," isn't it possible that they might come to see themselves reflected and even implicated in the works of the radical left?  

As I will seek to show here, the loose association of groups that have come to be known collectively as the "tea party movement" closely conforms to the organizational template of action forwarded in The Coming Insurrection.  The Coming Insurrection is effectively divided into two parts.  The first part diagnoses the problem, while the second provides a template for action within the social-political coordinates delineated by the diagnosis.  As noted here the other day, the diagnosis in the work is grim: civilization weighs upon the backs of the living like a dead corpse.  The model of action is aimed at shaking that corpse from the backs of the living, and is discursively organized under a series of slogans excerpted and summarized here the other day:

The book calls for decentralized, anarchist activity and reinvents the notion of the commune on the model of the anarchist affinity group . . . It calls on like-minded individuals to find each other, form communes, get organized, plunder, cultivate and fabricate, create territories, remove obstacles, turn anonymity into an offensive position, organize self-defense, make the most of every crisis, sabotage every representative authority, block the economy, liberate space from police occupation, take up arms while doing everything possible to make their use unnecessary, and depose authorities at a local level.

Tea party groups are voluntary associations of like-minded individuals.  Tea Party Nation describes itself as "a user-driven group of like-minded people."  Any such organization would necessarily fall under the expansive definition of the commune on the model of the anarchist affinity group as conceived in The Coming Insurrection, where we read: "Communes come into being when people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common path."  The model of action proposed in TCI is based on decentralized associations which cluster to form loosely coordinated, leaderless groups.  Think of the individual member as an atom, the local association, affinity group or commune as a molecule and the cluster of associations as a molar aggregate of those molecules.  The tea party movement prides itself on being both leaderless and highly decentralized in just such a manner.  Lew Rockwell reflected on "The Tea Party as a Leaderless Movement" last September.  He wrote:

This morning on NPR, Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal was analyzing the Tea Party as a deliberately leaderless, non-hierarchical movement. Its people are not interested in political power as such,  he said, but in changing people’s minds about big government. . . . the heart of the Tea Party is libertarian, in concert with its leaderless, ultra-decentralized organizational principles.

Just as in The Coming Insurrection, "GET ORGANIZED" is a popular slogan among tea party activists, who frequently employed it in the run-up to the 2010 general election.  In May 2009, Glenn Reynolds reported on tea party activists "getting organized":

The president of the Cincinnati Tea Party organized the community tea party, which was much more subdued than other rallies held earlier this spring. And that’s how it was intended. “It’s about organization. This is where we get people involved in the movement and really it was a relatively small group that put together the rallies on April 15 and March 15,” said Mike Wilson.

The Jackson, Michigan Tea Party Patriots began to "get organized" in January 2010: "I have about 20 people who want to meet in January to get organized," wrote organizer Ron Acton.  In February of last year, NPR reported that "Colorado Tea Party Groups Get Organized."  California Tea Party groups held workshops on "how to get organized" last March.  The Tea Party of Florida advertised its meet-ups under the subject heading: "Time to Get Organized."

The Coming Insurrection calls for the "creation of territories," stating that "every practice brings a territory into existence," and concluding that "local self-organization superimposes its own geography over the state cartography, scrambling and blurring it . . ."  Tea party groups across the country flexed their muscle over the summer of 2009 when they converged on town hall meetings held by congressional representatives, in actions that short-circuited the distinction between the local and the national by garnering the attention of the US mainstream media and even the global press.  Through local self-organization, tea party groups turned these town halls into one of their primary terrains.  Indeed, in this fashion, these groups also managed to fulfill another of the other prescriptions called for in The Coming Insurrection.  By angrily confronting these elected officials, they effectively "sabotaged the representative authority" of those very representatives, and revealed their weakness in the face of an organized opposition.  

Many tea party groups have also succeeded in "deposing authorities at a local level," though their focus has been primarily at deposing those authorities within the GOP.  Many tea party groups advocate infiltration of the local Republican party apparatus at the lowest levels, namely that of the precinct, thus "fleeing visibility" and turning their relative anonymity into an offensive position from which they could leverage higher order changes in the party's power structure.  The effectiveness of such action became clear as tea party challengers "removed obstacles" by defeating their establishmentarian rivals in Republican primaries ahead of the 2010 elections. 

The Coming Insurrection calls on readers to "block the economy."  Though the work specifically addresses actual physical blockades, the economic boycott likely remains the most popular strategy of "blocking the economy" in the United States.  There is a long list of companies that have been boycotted by tea party groups.  From Talking Points Memo, January 2010:

Last week, we told you about the tea party movement's next national target -- American businesses believed to be supporting the "socialist agenda" of Democratic politicians. On Jan. 20, the tea partiers plan to boycott these corporations during their "National Day of Strike."

From The Daily Caller, in late November 2010, "Tea Party targets big business":

“If you look at President Obama’s healthcare legislation and cap and trade, there’s only one reason those things got as far as they did – they had big business support,” said Tom Borelli, Director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project. Borelli is teaming up with Freedomworks President Matt Kibbe to promote responsible, sound business practices, and beginning next year, the two will begin encouraging supporters to boycott big business that lobbies for a “progressive” agenda.

Similar actions are ongoing among tea party groups across the country.  The Coming Insurrection further calls on readers to organize self-defense and take up arms.  Tea party activists famously made headlines across the country by publicly bearing arms at their protests and rallies.  Many tea party groups are, moreover, staunch defenders of gun rights and the Second Amendment, and there are likely more than a few who are also members of local militias.  

As this cursory glance shows, it is not difficult to see that the tea party movement has effectively implemented nearly all of the fourteen prescriptions for action from The Coming Insurrection summarized above.  The similarities between the tea party movement and the model of insurrectionary anarcho-communism proposed in the work are almost too obvious to be overlooked.  And the same might be said of the differences between the two.  Yet it is both noteworthy and highly ironic that the supposedly conservative tea party movement shares so many points of contact with insurrectionist anarcho-communism.  We might even say they have adjoining territories, as Freud put it.  Is it so unreasonable to assert that the apparent and vocal opposition between the two amounts to nothing more than a narcissism of small differences?  As the anarchist AK Press Collective wrote in their open letter to Glenn Beck: "You’re right: we’re revolutionaries. But aren’t you?"

Glenn Beck and the Coming Insurrection: Anarchism and Anonymous

Since the January 25th protest movement erupted in Egypt over two weeks ago, Glenn Beck has been under attack from the left, right and center for his global conspiracy theory of "the coming insurrection."  Most recently, none other than neoconservative icon Bill Kristol has denounced the way in which Beck "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left."  But Beck has been talking about "the coming insurrection" for some time.  As you might recall, I devoted a series of posts last spring to "the coming intersection of the tea party and anarchist movements" (see here, here and here).

The Coming Insurrection is an insurrectionary anarchist, or anarcho-communist manifesto first published in France in 2007.  When Beck began talking about the work in 2009 he helped turn it into a best-seller upon its publication in English, specifically urging his audience to "read this book" which he considered one of the "most evil things" he'd ever read.  At the time, an anarchist press collective responded to Beck with an open letter declaring: "we're like you, except we support real freedom, and that's why you're afraid of us."

It is an open question whether or not Beck's global conspiracy theory would appear more or less  outlandish if one understands that when he mentions "the coming insurrection" he is specifically referring to this book.  Few media commentators seem familiar with the work, or with the fact that Beck is specifically alluding to it, and those who are appear not to have read it.  David Neiwert writes at Crooks and Liars:

Glenn Beck was frothing at the mouth this week -- just before he went on an obviously much-needed vacation -- about an obscure French book that is hard to obtain and which no one appears to be reading, aside from a handful of anarchist aesthetes . . .

Ironically, Neiwert presumes it is absurd to speak about the potential political effectivity of such a book, but then goes on to argue that this very tactic has proven effective for the white supremacist movement, stating, "they're largely relegated to the fringes. But that doesn't mean people don't act on them."  Media Matters commented on Beck's recent programs underscoring the "obscurity" of the book:

All of this was offered up in service of his theory that the protests in Egypt are the manifestation of The Coming Insurrection, an obscure book that French police believe was written by a member of a small group of anarchists. Beck has repeatedly described the anonymous author (or authors) of the book as "communists." He's tied George Soros and President Obama to The Coming Insurrection, as well.

So, a diverse group of the Egyptian people are in the streets protesting an autocratic leader, and Glenn Beck has decided that this is directly connected to an anonymously written anarchist tract from France that he's been obsessing about for the past two years?

To believe that the uprising in Egypt cannot be connected to or accounted for by the theory of action proposed in The Coming Insurrection demonstrates a complete ignorance of the work's argument and message.  On the other hand, Beck's belief that he can construct a coherent theory of a coordinated, global, geostrategic conspiracy on the basis of it reveals a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation or a misappropriation of the book.  However, the claim that "the result of the coming insurrection will be that the world starts to implode," as Beck has stated, is perfectly in line with the book's primary argument and its stated goal.  Let's take a closer look at the work and attempt to remove it from its alleged obscurity.  

In The Coming Insurrection, crisis is framed as the everyday mode of contemporary society and civilization, and this state of affairs is perceived as an opportunity.  In the work's introduction, we read:

From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. . . . It’s the privileged feature of radical circumstances that a rigorous application of logic leads to revolution. It’s enough just to say what is before our eyes and not to shrink from the conclusions.

Whereas Karl Marx stated in his Eighteenth Brumaire that "the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living," in The Coming Insurrection the past and present weigh on the living like a corpse that no one can seem to shake off:

So we have a corpse on our backs, but we won’t be able to rid ourselves of it just like that. Nothing is to be expected from the end of civilization, from its clinical death. In and of itself, it can only be of interest to historians. It’s a fact, and it must be translated into a decision. Facts can be conjured away, but decision is political. To decide on the death of civilization, then to work out how it will happen: only decision will rid us of the corpse. GET GOING!

The book calls for decentralized, anarchist activity and reinvents the notion of the commune on the model of the anarchist affinity group, effectively creating an insurrectionary manual intended to aid those who seek to shake the corpse of contemporary civilization off their backs.  It calls on like-minded individuals to find each other, form communes, get organized, plunder, cultivate and fabricate, create territories, remove obstacles, turn anonymity into an offensive position, organize self-defense, make the most of every crisis, sabotage every representative authority, block the economy, liberate space from police occupation, take up arms while doing everything possible to make their use unnecessary, and depose authorities at a local level.

The Coming Insurrection connects the 2005 civil unrest in France with the 2006 protests in Oaxaca Mexico, the actions of American longshoreman in 2002, the Algerian uprising of 2001, the anti-globalization movement of the 1990's, the autonomous squatters movement in Hamburg Germany in the 1980's, the global unrest of the 1960's and so on.  Is it such a stretch of the imagination to connect these with the ongoing uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, or last year's riots in Greece, France and England, or even the recent anti-police protests in Denver?  As one anarchist website recently put it: "Egypt Today, Tomorrow the World!"

The theory of action proposed in The Coming Insurrection might also be found at work in the activities of the online hacktivist group known as "Anonymous."  Indeed, Anonymous perfectly conforms to the notion of the commune proposed in the insurrectionary manual, where we read:

Communes come into being when people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common path. The commune is perhaps what gets decided at the very moment when we would normally part ways. It’s the joy of an encounter that survives its expected end. . . . [They are defined] not by their membership, but by the spirit that animates them. A commune forms every time a few people, freed of their individual straitjackets, decide to rely only on themselves and measure their strength against reality . . . The commune is the basic unit of partisan reality.

From Encyclopedia Dramatica on Anonymous:

Anonymous is everyone and noone. You are. I am. Everyone is. Anonymous is humanity when the gloves come off. Anonymous is legion and its deeds are legend. . . . Anonymous is not a person, nor is it a group, movement or cause: Anonymous is a collective of people with too much time on their hands, a commune of human thought and useless imagery. A gathering of sheep and fools, assholes and trolls, and normal everyday netizens. An anonymous collective . . .

In recent months, Anonymous has shut down the websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Visa among others in support of Wikileaks, as well as the websites of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments in solidarity with the uprisings there.  Just the other day they hacked a security firm that was investigating them.  From Raw Story:

The online group of hacktivists known as "Anonymous" infiltrated the network and websites of an Internet security company after learning the company planned to sell information about the group to the FBI.

The website of Washington DC-based HBGary Federal was hijacked Sunday along with the Twitter account of CEO Aaron Barr. The company's website was defaced with a message that read, "This domain seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet." . . . .

In addition to hacking the company's website and Twitter account, "Anonymous" gained access to more than 44,000 company e-mails, which were released to the public in a 4.71 gigabyte Torrent file. The group also gained access to the report that was allegedly going to be sold to the FBI and posted it online (.pdf).

This is effectively "The Party of We" which I referred to here the other day.  The quote is from Tech Dirt:

centralized top-down legacy systems are coming into conflict with distributed, decentralized, bottom-up systems -- and not understanding them at all . . . They're not protesting by saying "this will not stand." They're protesting by saying "your laws don't matter, because we can simply route around them."

Indeed. 

The G8/G20 Summit: Martial Law, Political Violence and the Washington Consensus against Free Trade

As is the annual tradition, this year's G8/G20 summit in Toronto was met with violent protests. This is only to be expected when world leaders meet with global loan sharks and trade organizations to talk finance, trade, energy and security, especially given the fact that developing nations, regional interest groups and non-governmental organizations remain marginalized in the talks and negotiations. As the Christian Science Monitor reported:

With developed countries focusing on – and arguing about – stimulus spending vs. austerity measures and whether to impose a global bank tax, the summit is unlikely to meaningfully address the priorities of least-developed countries: reforming the governance of international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund to give them more of a say; loosening requirements for IMF loans; ensuring predictable aid flows; and open trade access to developed markets.

The summit took place in the city's center, fortified by a billion dollar security operation that would be difficult to distinguish from the implementation of martial law – police had even been secretly granted special arrest powers for the duration of the summit. Business Week described the security situation:

A 12-block section of the central core is surrounded by concrete barriers and three-meter (10-foot) high metal fencing, part of Canada’s largest-ever security operation with 20,000 police and security guards. Canada is spending as much as C$1.2 billion ($1.16 billion) for the meetings to host world leaders, including C$930 million on security. . . .

Police set up two lines to block the crowd, first with a group of officers on bicycles to turn the demonstrators away from the security zone. A block further south, police in riot gear and on horseback or with police dogs blocked an intersection. The Toronto Transit Commission closed subway, bus and streetcar service in the downtown core of Canada’s biggest city. Regional train service into downtown was also halted and buildings including Brookfield Place on Bay Street were locked down.

However, this did not stop hundreds of people from breaking with the officially permitted protest march on Saturday, in order to attempt a breach of the security perimeter that had been set up by police. A clearly well-organized Black Bloc launched attacks against symbols of state and corporate power: police cars were set on fire, windows of banks and prominent multi-national corporations were smashed, even mainstream media outlets were targeted for aggression. Responding to the violence at a press conference on Saturday, Toronto Mayor David Miller stated: "This isn't our Toronto and my response is anger." Ironically, this statement likely also captures the sentiment of the summit's most violent opponents, whose actions were unimpeded, and perhaps even stoked, by the billion dollar security operation. In response, riot police escalated their tactics leading to assaults against journalists reporting on the protests. From the NYT:

As the police escalated their tactics, reporters were often kept at bay. Steve Paikin, a prominent Toronto journalist, said that he was escorted away by two police officers who saw his media credentials just before they moved to arrest a large number of demonstrators who were protesting the city’s temporary restrictions on civil liberties.

Mr. Paikin said he saw another journalist, Jesse Rosenfeld, a contributor to Web site of The Guardian, the British newspaper, being held by two police officers while a third punched the reporter in the stomach. After Mr. Rosenfeld fell to the ground, the third officer jabbed an elbow into his back, Mr. Paikin said.

Violence perpetrated by Black Bloc anarchists was denounced by protest groups seeking to influence leaders at the summit. At The Green Market, Richard Matthews wrote last week, before Saturday's protest:

Although the UN chief has voiced his support for the green economy, security concerns for the G20 meetings in Toronto have forced the cancellation of the "Greening the Supply Chain" event. . . . The security presence is not only to ensure that foreign terrorists cannot use the event to attack the world's economic leaders, it is also in place to protect against domestic militants whose tactics have earned them the name Black Bloc. The self-described anarchists have declared war against capitalism and they seek violent confrontation with the authorities. . . .

Events were being cancelled days before the start of the G20. On Tuesday June 22, 2010, Green Enterprise Ontario and Live Green Toronto were prepared to present an event titled "Greening the supply chain - an eco-opportunity." However, instead of discussing ways of developing a green purchasing strategy, Toronto is closed for business.

This marks a familiar bifurcation among protest groups – distinguishing between those who peaceably assemble to petition leaders for the redress of grievances and those who seek violent confrontation with authorities – and shows the relation and disconnect between the wholesome face and the violent underbelly of the public body politic. However, this distinction also perfectly mirrors the disconnect that is constitutive of the global political establishment itself: world leaders put on a show of confidence, cooperation and goodwill toward all in front of the cameras while their policies result in the violent disruption and even destruction of the lives of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide.

Ironically, while many protest groups at the G8/G20 summit can be characterized as left-wing and far-left-wing organizations, among their most prominent goals is the reform of subsidy and export policy in industrialized nations, along lines that would please hard-line libertarians and even conservative Republicans. From the CS Monitor:

A leaked draft (pdf) of the final declaration of the summit, dated June 11, renews the G20’s commitment to “refrain from raising new barriers to investment or trade” until 2013. But it fails to set a strict deadline for the conclusion of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round of negotiations. This has been a sticking point between developed and developing countries, mostly over agricultural exports and subsidies.

The "sticking point" can be summed up in just a few lines. Developing nations demand restrictions on agricultural subsidies like those handed out in the United States and France, arguing that they act as a barrier to free trade and provide an unfair advantage to concerns from industrialized nations; and so they call for a "level playing field." Ironically, industrialized nations like the United States and France argue that the subsidies are necessary to ensure a "level playing field," since American and French farmers would simply not be able to compete on the global market and be driven out of business were it not for their massive subsidies. In other words, on this issue the consensus among Democrats and Republicans is that the United States should not have to conform to the strictures of the Washington Consensus. Mark Tapscott reported last month at The Washington Examiner:

Remember Scotty Pippen, the former NBA star? He was also a farmer. That's right, a real hayseed, who was so good at it that the federal government paid him $130,000 over a five-year period not to grow crops. I was able to report that fact back in 2002 because of the work of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in posting on its web site a massive database of federal farm subsidy recipients maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture . . .

you can forget about updating that story any time soon because USDA is no longer updating the database. Seems that the Democratic Congress in 2008 changed the law that previously required the department to maintain the database to say that doing so was merely optional. The federal farm bureaucrats naturally opted out of disclosing how much they were paying people like former ABC News White House correspondent Sam Donaldson and multi-millionaire David Rockefeller not to grow crops. No doubt the decision was made to "save tax dollars."

As you can see from my 2002 column, the action in 2008 by Congress culminated efforts that stretched back at least to the days in 2001 and 2002 when the Democrats controlled the Senate under then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-IA, was chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Now, the Center for Public Integrity reports that USDA paid nearly $16 billion in such subsidies in 2009, but finding out who got those billions will be all but impossible in the future, thanks to the decision against updating the database. What was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's promise in 2006 about the most honest and transparent Congress ever? [Emphases added.]

This action on the part of the Democratic congress was not enough to spare Republicans the embarrassment of revelations that they and their districts are among the most prominent beneficiaries of agricultural socialism. Late last year it was reported that outspoken Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann's family had received a quarter of a million dollars in government handouts, and that the four districts receiving the largest payouts were all represented by supposedly conservative Republicans. From Politico:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — so fond of accusing the Obama administration of foisting socialism on an unwilling America — has apparently been the recipient of about a quarter of million bucks in government handouts.

Liberal site Truthdig links to an Environmental Working Group analysis of federal agricultural subsidies and found that the Bachmann family farm, managed by her father-in-law until his recent death, received $251,000 in farm payments between 1995 and 2006.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate her stake in the Wisconsin farm is worth up to $250,000. Her income from the farm has grown from $2,000 a year a few years back to as much as $50,000 for 2008 . . .

EWG found that the top four districts receiving the largest AG payments are represented by conservative Republicans: [emphasis added] • 1.) 3rd district of Nebraska (Rep. Adrian Smith - Republican) - $1,736,923,011 in subsidies go to 51,702 recipients. • 2.) 1st district of Kansas (Rep. Jerry Moran - Republican) - $1,315,979,151 in subsidies go to 75,802 recipients. •3.) 4th district of Iowa (Rep. Tom Latham - Republican) - $1,288,622,912 in subsidies go to 35,696 recipients. • 4.) 9th district of Texas (Rep. Randy Neugebauer - Republican) - $1,227,192,312 in subsidies go to 21,290 recipients.

This issue continues to dog supposedly conservative, free-market Republicans seeking office this November. As David Weigel reported in April:

Last week, Amy Gardner reported on the Tea Party flak faced by Tennessee congressional candidate Stephen Fincher over the roughly $200,000 per year he receives in federal farm subsidies. The size of Fincher's subsidies put him in a class of his own, but he's not alone in receiving such subsidies. According to USDA records downloaded by the Environmental Working Group, Indiana State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who is running for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, received a total of $156,907.54 in subsidies from 1997 to 2006.

Confronted with the contradiction between favoring the free market while receiving massive government subsidies, Stutzman parroted the "level playing field" talking point while asserting that he wanted to "phase out" the program:

When asked about the subsides, Stutzman said that he hadn't taken too much heat -- "most people in Indiana respect the farmer" and confirmed that he'd promised Tea Partiers that he wanted to phase out the program.

"I do believe we should get out of the subsidy business," said Stutzman. "We should let free markets work. A permanent subsidy creates a permanent distortion of the market and right now farmers have to work within this system."

If elected, Stutzman said he would take a hard look at farm bills -- he pointed out that his Republican rivals, both congressional veterans, used to support them flat-out. [Emphasis added.]

"I make more off of crop insurance in a bad year that subsidy will ever pay. But we have to keep a level playing field globally," he said.

Does that mean radical left-wing groups at the G8 are in fact libertarian or conservative? Or does it make this conservative Republican a radical leftist?

The Zapatista Party Candidate for Governor of Ohio and the Necessity of Prison and Sentencing Reform

Sean Swain is probably the most extreme left-wing candidate for public office you've never heard of. And no, he's not a Democrat. In fact, he might have more in common with opponents of big government, insofar as he advocates the destruction of all government, that is. Swain is running for governor of Ohio from his prison cell in Toledo as an anarchist write-in candidate under the banner of the Zapatista Party. This is not Swain's first campaign for governor either.

In 2006, the convicted murderer publicized his gubernatorial candidacy in a number of letters to local media. Over the course of the campaign season and the following months, the Cincinnati Enquirer's Politics Extra blog relayed at least three of the inmate's letters: one announced his campaign ("I have no major party backing me; I will be excluded from the televised debates; by statute, you will not find my name on the ballot, and I am relegated to a write-in campaign. I am operating on a $17 per month budget from my prison cell"); another reported his intent to obtain the endorsements of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez; and with a third letter, sent in the summer following the election, Swain declared himself "governor-in-exile" and stated that he had not yet conceded the race to Democrat Ted Strickland ("I have not conceded the election. In fact, I was sworn in as governor in a ceremony here in Toledo on the same day Ted Strickland moved all of his crap into my office"). In 2009, Swain was interviewed by Eli Braun of Waging Nonviolence for an article at Street Vibes detailing the horrors of solitary confinement. From the article at Street Vibes:

Since 1991, Swain, now 49, has been sent to solitary confinement “seven or eight times,” including a 144-day stint from May to October 2003. Most recently, he violated rules by “encourage(ing) prisoners to partake in a 30-day work stoppage,” according to the official conduct report.

This year, Swain's candidacy is listed alongside those of incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland, Republican John Kasich, Green Dennis Spisak and Libertarian Ken Matesz at D.C.'s Political Report, the Green Pages and Politics1.

Swain appears to have been maintaining a campaign site until at least a few weeks ago, when the page went down. But sections of it can still be accessed via Google's web cache. In the "Affidavit of Sean Swain" he explains the circumstances of his arrest and conviction for murder and aggravated murder in the early 1990's, for acts which he claims were in self-defense. On the site's main page, Swain outlines his political platform under the headline: "Treason We Can Believe In." Here are a few choice excerpts:

• "I’m not talking about rocking the boat—I’m talking about sinking the motherfucker."
• "Democracy isn’t shit, I know. You choose your own slavemaster. Not cool. But just imagine if you could turn your ballot into a bullet and blow the government’s brains out, once and for all."
• "I’m running for Governor of Ohio from prison in 2010 as a Zapatista Party candidate. I don’t want to be Ohio’s NEXT governor; I want to be Ohio’s LAST governor."

Among other things, Swain calls for the pardon and release of all prisoners, the recall of the national guard from "the Oil Wars," and abolishing all government and state agencies to create an "Autonomous Zone." He concludes: "THE BAD NEWS: It will be the end of civilization as we know it. THE GOOD NEWS: It was never worth a shit anyway."

Given the many problems that plague the American prison and criminal justice system, it is unfortunate, though perhaps symptomatic, that an individual like Swain has been driven to the advocacy of madness rather than that of prison reform. As is widely known, but rarely addressed, "With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second," as the Washington Post reported in 2008. A report from Human Rights Watch adds: "Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black."

Due to the inflexibility of sentencing guidelines and the country's extremely high rates of incarceration for even the pettiest offenses, among other things, many American prisons are also dangerously overcrowded. It is not difficult to comprehend that crowded prisons make for insecure and violent prisons. Numerous studies have found that well over 100,000 incarcerated men, women and children have been the victims of rape at the hands of other inmates as well as corrections officers. Characteristically, under the influence of the prison industry lobby, including both public and private sector organizations, political leadership in the Democratic and Republican parties are more likely to respond to this crisis with calls for more prisons rather than reasonable reforms. If we allow for the breakdown of civilization behind bars, it should be no surprise that those behind bars will call for the end of civilization on this side of them.

This article is a cross-posting, originally written for Uncovered Politics, where it was featured in the Oddball of the Week section.

Anarchist Publisher to Glenn Beck: "We're like you, except we support real freedom, and that's why you're afraid of us"

Back in March, I wrote on the coming intersection of the anarchist and tea party movements, highlighting Glenn Beck's popularization of the anarchist book "The Coming Insurrection" as well as the potential for anarchist actions revolving around the April 15th tax day tea party protests. Beck has apparently continued to present anarchist materials to his viewers and listeners, alerting them to another tract published by the AK Press, namely, "We Are an Image From the Future." The AK Press Collective has now written an open letter to Glenn Beck, suggesting that they and he have more in common than he would like to admit. Some excerpts from a lengthy text:

Hi Glenn . . . We’re thrilled that you featured our book We Are an Image of the Future: The Greek Revolts of 2008 on your May 3rd show. We were, however, a little confused by your description of the book, and the way that it fit into the overall argument you made . . .

So we asked ourselves: What could account for this guy waving around a book written and published by anarchists, while never quoting a single word from it, and then going on to associate the book with political groups—like the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party—that no one in the book, or associated with the book, would endorse? How could he miss something so obvious?

Then it dawned on us: you’re afraid of anarchists. You’re not afraid of the fake media portrayal of anarchists as bomb-throwing maniacs: that’s your bread and butter. You’re afraid of real anarchists, the actual ideas they espouse, the real work they do . . .

Like you, we believe that people’s lives would be much better off without government intervention. Centralized power suppresses individual and community initiative and keeps people from achieving their full potential. Like you, we don’t think the solution to our current economic crisis lies in socialized industry or new layers of well-paid government bureaucrats. And, like you and many of your tea party pals, we agree that bankers and fat-cat corporate elites aren’t exactly concerned with our best interests. As you put it, it’s time to take down the folks who “line their pockets with wealth gained from enslaving a whole group of people.” And, although you seemed a bit confused on this point, that means putting “people before profits,” which is pretty much the central concern of the protesters in Greece right now. And we mean all people, regardless of income, race, gender, sexuality, or immigration status.

You’re right: we’re revolutionaries. But aren’t you? . . . As anarchists, we’re dedicated to the idea of abolishing the state and capitalism altogether . . . We understand that you’re confused–these are confusing times. But, deep down, you and the tea partiers know that you can’t trust any politician, or banker, or corporate hack, or union bureaucrat…or anyone who makes their living sucking power and profit from ordinary people . . . Admit that your passionate and convoluted rants are a nervous dance around your inability to support real freedom (anarchism) over unbridled power (Communism and capitalism). And then use your massive wealth and power for the forces of good.

No word yet on whether Beck has responded to this letter.

Observers Misconstrue May Day Violence: Anarchist "Street Party" is not "Immigrants' Rights" March, as Documented by Event's Flyers

Numerous commentators are drawing attention today to the vandalism and riot that took place in Santa Cruz Saturday night, based on reports in the Mercury News and Associated Press. See Memeorandum for an overview of the discussion. Scroll down to see exemplars of the flyers from the event. From the Mercury News article:

A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker's and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. Many in the group were carrying makeshift torches as they marched, breaking storefront windows and writing "anarchist graffiti" on buildings, according to Capt. Steve Clark.

The AP story provides a bit more detail:

Close to 20 businesses were damaged after what started as a peaceful immigrants' rights march in downtown Santa Cruz turned violent, requiring police to call other agencies for help, authorities said. Police spokesman Zach Friend said an estimated 250 people started marching through the city around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. It was a harmonious but "unpermitted and unsanctioned event," he said, until some in the crowd started breaking windows and spraying paint on retail shops that line the downtown corridor. Friend said he wasn't sure if the damage was caused by people marching in support of immigrants' rights, or if the group was "infiltrated by anarchists." [Emphasis added.]

Republican blogger Dan Riehl writes:

the AP goes out of its way to suggest the group may have been infiltrated by anarchists at the end of their report. And contrary to a Mercury News report, this is about illegal immigration, not immigration, or worker's right's. Jim Hoft has more - including video.

Obviously, Riehl is of the opinion that the "liberal media" are employing the anarchist infiltration angle to falsify the story in an effort to downplay the significance of the violence. Riehl is only half right, however. The AP is only as clueless as the local police are. The demonstration and parade was not "infiltrated" by anarchists, it was rather much more likely organized by anarchists!

To fully understand the anarchist connection a bit of history is in order. May Day is known around the world as "International Worker's Day" to commemorate the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886. From Wikipedia:

The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket riot or Haymarket massacre) was a disturbance that took place on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, and began as a rally in support of striking workers. An unknown person threw a bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers and an unknown number of civilians. In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were tried for murder. Four were put to death, and one committed suicide in prison. [Emphasis added.]

The rally and march in Santa Cruz was not an "immigrants' rights" rally like those held in cities across the US, as the Mercury News and AP reports lead one to believe, and as numerous bloggers continue to assert. It was a planned, "unpermitted and unsanctioned" anarchist "street party" celebrating International Workers' Day. This is clear from the video linked by Riehl, which shows a parade of dancers and revelers, none of whom are chanting political slogans or even holding signs as one would expect from an immigrant and workers' rights rally. It becomes all the more obvious when one sees the flyers and web calendars advertising the event.

The event's blog (maydaysantacruz.wordpress.com) has been shut down by its admin, but the cache can still be found online. On April 3rd, under the headline "May Day 2010" the announcement "celebrating international workers' day" read: "On May 1st 2010, come join us for a street party at 9pm*, the clock tower downtown." This event was in the works long before the immigration issue was catapulted back into the news. Here are two exemplars of flyers lifted from the cache:


Clearly, the idea is not for an immigrants' rights rally but rather a "massive street party." Consider also this flyer:


Another announcement for the event can be found at the Santa Cruz IMC, which provides the following information, including the web address of the event blog noted above and references to the fliers posted above:

Title:	May Day Street Party - Downtown Santa Cruz
START DATE:	Saturday May 01
TIME:	9:00 PM - 6:00 AM
Location Details:
Clocktower, downtown Santa Cruz, 9pm until the sun comes up
Event Type:	Party/Street Party
Contact Name	wage earners everywhere
Email Address
Phone Number
Address
May 1st 2010 Clocktower, downtown Santa Cruz, 9pm until the sun comes up http://www.maydaysantacruz.wordpress.com May 1st is International Worker's Day! How appropriate that this year this day should fall on a SATURDAY. As we all know along with the 40 hour work week and minimum wage the weekend its self was created by and for working people in this country through long and militant struggle. What better way to celebrate than by dancing in the streets? LET'S GET DOWN LIKE THE ECONOMY - ALL NIGHT! meet at the clock tower at 9pm sharp and let the revelry begin. Bring drinks, bring fun, bring friends! http://www.maydaysantacruz.wordpress.com print a flier, post a flier!

Such acts of violence were not confined to Santa Cruz. Vandals smashed windows in Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday night as well. As Confederate Yankee notes: "The article goes on to mention that two of those arrested are anarchists, affiliated with known radical left-wing groups." Reports of other such acts are likely to surface. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the response to these incidents in the blogosphere are the many comparisons with tea party protests accompanied by claims of partisan hypocrisy. Confederate Yankee writes:

Imagine, if you will, what would happen if a group split off from a Tea Party protest and went on a rampage, smashing windows and vandalizing cars.

Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air:

Will the same hyperventilating media that sees a militia in every Tea Party make the same broad-stroke analysis of the open-borders Left after a real show of violence and demands for revolution?

Left Coast Rebel asks:

Can you imagine if limited government Tea Partiers did something like this?

The difference, of course, is that tea party activists present themselves as the embodiment of the American mainstream. Anarchists, on the other hand, are obviously quite a different story and present themselves as the resistance to the American mainstream. But, for some reason, tea party supporters are literally comparing themselves with anarchists. Coincidentally, none other than Marco Rubio drew the distinction himself in an interview on a Sunday talk show, saying that he is "not an anarchist" and emphasizing that conservatism is mainstream. From Sunshine News:

Rubio also dismissed assertions that he is too conservative to win a general election, despite his success to date in the Republican primary. “I think that limited government - conservatism, is what most Americans are,” he said. “I think that's mainstream American thought. I'm not an anarchist. I believe government has an important role to play in society. I just don't think it should play a dominant role. I don't believe government is the most important institution in society.”

Tea Party Anarchists? Anarchist News and Info-Shop News Respond to Tea Party Rally Story

Following the publication of an anonymous call for anarchist actions at tea party rallies on April 15th, the hysterical reaction of some mainstream political blogs resulted in a flood of new visitors and vocal commenters to anarchist websites. As I wrote on the initial engagement:

Tea party activists and supporters have now flooded the comments threads attached to the initial call to action at Infoshop News, though they do not seem to have yet discovered those at Anarchist News and Indymedia. The resulting "discussion" at Infoshop is a fascinating object lesson in the politics of mutual mis-recognition. I would relay a few choice quotes, but the page is now failing to load, likely due to unusually high levels of traffic. [Public Frenemy provides some more commentary on the possible future contours of the confrontation between anarchists and tea party activists.]

Info-Shop News has now published a statement on the "tea party rally story" to clarify a number of points about their news service for folks who are likely unfamiliar with the anarchist website. Here's the statement in full:

A recent story posted to the Infoshop News newswire about upcoming Tea Party rallies has generated quite a controversy beyond our website. Several false accusations have been published by other websites about our news service. We want to take this opportunity to clarify several things about our news service for people unfamiliar with Infoshop News.

Infoshop News is one of the oldest online news services, having operated since 1997. Infoshop News is part of the larger Infoshop.org website and is run by an editorial collective. We publish original news, reporting and opinion. Infoshop News also re-publishes articles and opinion from other sources and links to many stories published by independent and mainstream media. We rely heavily on user-submitted stories, including material from anonymous sources.

Infoshop News is run by anarchists and libertarians and features news and opinion from anarchists, libertarians and anti-authoritarians. The news service also includes material from non-anarchist sources, as we think it's important to provide news, information and opinion from different sources. We aim to buck the dominant trend among American political news projects, which focus on providing selective news and opinion for people who already agree with that news and opinion. We favor a cross-pollination of ideas, within some parameters. While our news service is popular with anarchists, we also have many readers from other political persuasions.

The story about anarchists and Tea Party rallies was not written or authored by Infoshop News. We may not be the first website or blog that posted this anonymous call. Since it wasn't written or authored by Infoshop News, it doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the Infoshop staff, volunteers or contributors. Therefore, “Infoshop anarchists” did not make any call to action, nor did this fictional group author the story about Tea Party rallies.

The Tea Party rally story was probably written by one individual, so people should assume it reflects the views of one particular, anonymous person.

Much of the fuss about the story appears to be directed at a paragraph that calls for a defense of liberal social programs. People seem to think that this is an example of anarchist hypocrisy about statism. Again, this story is the opinion of one person. Several anarchists we've talked to this week have expressed criticism of the call, pointing out that it represents a liberal take on the Tea Party movement. One anarchist pointed out that several of the links in the story point to articles on liberal websites.

Tea party activists unfamiliar with the site might be surprised by the fact that Infoshop's editorial team is quick to denounce liberal statists and has not effectively doubled down and endorsed the "call to action." It appears, however, that the Info-shop statement is also an indirect response to an article published at Anarchist News, which criticized Info-shop for "calling for “anarchists” to crash the Tea Parties for not supporting big government." Perhaps this author simply does not realize that the very same call was published at Anarchist News as well! Nonetheless, the article, which is entitled "Fake Anarchists Plan to Crash Tea Parties," warns that calls for violence and acts of violence may well be the work of "statist plants," and justifies the suspicion with numerous examples of government and police agent provocateurs infiltrating anarchist protests in the recent past. He writes:

This post is simply a warning that people calling for the initiation of violence may be statist plants, or simply misguided. It is my opinion that anarchists — of whatever variety — should not antagonize the tea partiers; who are already angry at the state, and some may be ready to reject it. My view is that anyone who heeds this call to action should attempt to reach out the tea partiers, and not to simply counter them for the sake of countering them.

That’s all we mean to communicate in this post. Kurt Nimmo and the sources/videos linked in this post may have other views; but they are posted here to illustrate proof of statist infiltration in the recent past. We believe in cooperation with anyone who wishes to get out from under the state system; so long as they don’t advocate initiating violence; or engaging in racism. — Ben

PS: If you do decide you want to interface with the tea partiers to try to win them over; the talking-points discussed here are perfect material for doing so.

We shall see if tea party activists and conservative Republican political bloggers are willing to continue to follow this story, or if they are merely interested in composing hysterical headlines.

The Coming Intersection: Initial Critical Engagement Between the Tea Party and Anarchist Movements

When I wrote the other day of 'the coming intersection' between the tea party and anarchist movements – relaying the call for counter-actions by anarchist groups at the upcoming tax day tea party protests –, I obviously did not know what form that confrontation would take, nor that it would come so quickly. We have a better idea today. A number of tea partisan bloggers have now picked up on this story, apparently via Infowars or the Jawa Report. Left Coast Rebel is "kicking himself," having first seen the story here days ago. Gateway Pundit indulges in typically absurd duopolist hysteria, with the headline: "Anarchists Plan War on April 15th Tea Parties." Red State is calling the potential anarchist counter-actions a "lefty freakout." Another Black Conservative advises readers: "These animals are looking for trouble, don’t give it to them." Memeorandum, as always, provides an indispensable overview of the discussion.

Tea party activists and supporters have now flooded the comments threads attached to the initial call to action at Infoshop News, though they do not seem to have yet discovered those at Anarchist News and Indymedia. The resulting "discussion" at Infoshop is a fascinating object lesson in the politics of mutual mis-recognition. I would relay a few choice quotes, but the page is now failing to load, likely due to unusually high levels of traffic.

The great irony here is that anarchist groups had probably not actually planned or organized many, if any, actions or counter-protests surrounding the tax day tea party events, which we can conclude from the fact that this particular call to action appeared just two weeks before the tax day tea parties. However, now that tea party activists have flooded Infoshop's servers, that may be likely to change. By the way, if you are interested in learning about or following the activities of anarchist groups in your city or state, but don't know where to begin to find the relevant info, one place to start might be the Independent Media Center's global umbrella site, simply scroll down and navigate to the appropriate link in the left sidebar.

The Coming Intersection of the Tea Party and Anarchist Movements

Tea party groups are planning another set of nationwide protests and rallies on April 15th, 2010, and this year they may well be confronted with counter-protests, if not also direct action, from the American anarchist movement. Over the weekend a call went out over a number of anarchist news wires calling on activists to "Crash the tea parties!" The release at Anarchist News, Infoshop News and Indymedia, identifies the tea party movement as a coalition of conservative groups and right-wing bogeymen intent on dismantling existing social welfare programs, and urges active opposition at the April 15th demonstrations. We read:

On April 15th thousands of right-wingers will attend rallies in cities and towns across the United States. The organizers of this nationwide day of protest call it a tea party. This tea party movement that emerged only a year ago is a coalition of conservatives, anti-semites, fascists, libertarians, racists, constitutionalists, militia men, gun freaks, homophobes, ron paul supporters, alex jones conspiracy types and american flag wavers. If the tea party movement continues to grow in size and strength there is a big chance they will dominate this country in the near future. If the tea party movement takes over this country they will really hurt poor people by getting rid of social programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, student aid, free health care, etc. The tea party movement will say these programs must be gotten rid of because hard-working taxpayers cannot afford to pay for these things especially when the economy is in a depression. There are three options we have with the tea party movement:

1. Organize counter-protests against the tea party demonstrations, same time, same place. This is probably the best option. We need to get in the streets on April 15th and show the tea party movement that there are lots of people out there who oppose their agenda.

2. Get individual tea party protesters to leave the right-wing and move to the left politically.

3. Ignore the tea party movement. This is the worst option because without anyone opposing them they could easily gain power.

The piece also directs readers to a number of tea party websites "so you can spy on them." Among these are Tax Day Tea Party, Tea Party Patriots, and Re-Tea Party. Of course, if anarchists really wanted to confound if not also discredit the tea party movement, they might consider joining the tea party protests rather than organizing counter-actions.

It is worth noting here that anarchist groups have been closely watching the tea party movement virtually from its inception, and appear both attracted and repulsed by its overall message. From a report on the tax day tea party protests of 2009 at Portland Indymedia:

Much of what was said and the content of many of the signs would indeed get nods of approval from those on the Progressive side of the aisle. "Stop the Looting, Start Prosecuting;" "Tea Bag the Fed, Declare Oregon Sovereignty;" "Dems, Reps, Wake Up;" "When Injustice Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty;" "Banks Take Your Loses."

There is much common ground here, yet I did not feel the crowd to be in sympathy with the poor, the homeless, the undocumented immigrant. The rhetoric from the speakers emphasized the many problems which brought them all to the Square, yet few if any solutions were offered. There was a general and overwhelming mood of discontent, with constant reference to the fact that "we the people" could somehow solve the problems, if government would leave us alone.

Arguably, anarchists have already successfully infiltrated tea party events and rallies. From the Twin Cities Indymedia, November 2009:

Forty-five anti-immigration activists held a small rally outside the state capitol on Saturday. Counter-protest from members of Anti-Racist Action, Bash Back, the Minnesota Immigrants' Rights Action Coalition and others was frequent, vigorous and hilarious. ("America is not for Russians! America is not for Germans! Europeans go home!") . . . One activist, under the name "Robert Erickson," managed to get on the list of speakers and riled the crowd into a frenzy about the theft, murder and disease inflicted by illegal immigrants... from Europe, upon indigenous populations. In a "Yes Men" moment, the anti-immigrant crowd sat in silence, trying to figure out what just happened.

"Robert Erickson" continues to stage such actions, having successfully pulled off yet another one just this month in Washington D.C.

On the other hand, tea party activists have begun to delve into recent works calling for anarchist insurrection. Sales of The Coming Insurrection skyrocketed over the last six months, after the book was reviewed by Glenn Beck on his Fox News program. From Beck in July 2009:

As world economies go down the tank and unemployment continues to rise, disenfranchised people are set to explode. The dangerous leftist book that could spark this is "The Coming Insurrection." This is a call to arms for violent revolution, authored anonymously by a French group called the Invisible Committee who want to bring down capitalism.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported on the resulting spike in sales:

In July, Mr. Beck introduced the book to his three million or so viewers, accompanied by video of burning cars and swarming protesters. “Here is the one thing everyone seems to be missing. The extreme left is actively calling for violence,” he told his audience. “It calls for violent revolution. An anonymous group from France, of all places, called the Invisible Committee, penned it. They want to bring down capitalism and the Western way of life.”

This month, Mr. Beck proclaimed it “the most evil book I’ve read in a long, long time.” The next day, “The Coming Insurrection,” whose authors call themselves the Invisible Committee, rose to No. 54 on Amazon’s best-seller list. In July, the book briefly reached No. 1. And even this weekend the book remained around No. 240.

I have remarked before on conservatives' appropriation of political strategies they themselves deride as "far left" and "radical socialist." Perhaps we will see the adoption of typical anarchist methods and tactics by tea party groups in the near future. Following the passage of Obamacare, the windows of Democratic offices were smashed in towns across the country. Perhaps a tea party black bloc is being organized at this very moment.

Update 4/1/10: Judging from Memeorandum, it seems a number of other bloggers have finally picked up on this story, apparently via Infowars. Left Coast Rebel is "kicking himself." Gateway Pundit indulges in typically absurd duopolist hysteria, with the headline: "Anarchists Plan War on April 15th Tea Parties." Red State is calling the potential anarchist counter-actions a "lefty freakout." Another Black Conservative urges readers "These animals are looking for trouble, don’t give it to them."

The funny thing, of course, is that there are probably very few planned anarchist counter-protests anywhere at this point, otherwise word of them would have gotten out long ago.