Do you believe in a better world? Do you believe in one without the torture of poverty and slavery; without hierarchies based on dominance; without a dying planet? If you do believe in this world, what are you willing to do to help bring it about?
I know many who yearn for justice, but far fewer with any kind of plan for achieving it. There’s no lack of morality in this equation, just of strategy and, perhaps, courage.
Every movement for social change has understood that when a system of law is corrupt, we must turn instead to the laws of the universe: human rights, the living land, justice. These movements are always deemed radical—and that’s because they are. Hope and prayers do not alone work to change the world. We’re going to have to fight for it.
All your heroes of the past knew this. Those who won civil rights knew it. Those who won women’s suffrage knew it. Those who abolished slavery knew it. Those who freed India from colonial rule knew it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly understood this. He said, “Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance comes. We’ve got to keep on keeping on, in order to gain freedom. It is not done voluntarily, but it is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are oppressed. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.”
All movements striking at the roots of social problems were—and still are—radical by default.
There’s no shortage of issues that need tackling today. Pick your favorite atrocity: dying oceans, species extinction, deforestation, climate chaos, pollution, violence against women, militarism, white supremacy, poverty, colonialism, homophobia, slavery, government corruption. The hard reality is that the world and all that makes life worth living is under attack—and we’re losing the battle. Everything keeps getting worse and our standards for success keep getting lowered. Never has there been a more critical time for those who want a better world to rise and make it happen. So what’s stopping us?
Of course there are vast and powerful entities wholly invested in and mercilessly guarding the way things are. This is an old story; we’re Margaret Mead’s small group of thoughtful, committed citizens taking on a giant. But in reality, we’re not even there yet. No, we’re still struggling to find unity amongst ourselves, to gather the people necessary to begin making any change at all.
It’s long past time to be forthright about what divides us as activists. Most all of us want to see the same outcome—a living planet, flourishing human communities—but we stumble on how to get there. Sure, some things we just won’t agree on, and that’s perfectly fine. But with the stakes so high, are we willing to forfeit all possibility of effectiveness because we can’t find a way to get along?
Let’s talk about our differences so we can better find our common ground. Writer Lierre Keith has investigated the history of social movements and emerged with much of the work done for us. She suggests there are two major currents amongst activists: liberals and radicals. This is not a dichotomy: like reform and revolution, both liberals and radicals have been necessary and complimentary to each other. The key is balance and respect for various approaches to the same problems.
The first difference between radicals and liberals is how we view individuals. Radicals see society as made of groups or classes; individual people share common clause based on shared circumstances and goals. Liberals, on the other hand, see individuals as just that; each person is distinct from another. The “working class”, for example, was a radical concept which liberals have largely removed from their discourse.
Next is how social change happens. Liberals lend their energy to ideals and attitudes, certain that change will come one heart and mind at a time. Institutions are the targets of radicals, though, with old corrupt ones sought to be dismantled and replaced with just, sustainable, new ones. If Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement would have focused solely on convincing whites that blacks aren’t inferior, they would have been taking the liberal route. If they would have focused solely on defeating racist laws, they would have been taking the radical route. History suggests that it was both that got the job done.
A final difference centers on justice and what we think it looks like. Radicals tend to measure justice by long-term material conditions—a lack of oppression and destruction in everyday life, now and forever. Morality is predetermined for the liberals, with the law or broader society acting as judge. Any win in the realm of free speech, for example, might look like a step in the right direction to the liberal perspective, whereas radicals might be more concerned with eliminating hate speech (and groups), whether or not it is legally permissible.
Despite the distinctions, effective activism hinges on understanding power and how it works. Wherever we may fall on the spectrum, we must keep our eyes on power: who has it, how it’s being used, and how it can be transferred from the hands of the powerful to the hands of the powerless. There is no way to talk about social change without talking about power.
Again, all throughout history liberals and radicals have employed complimentary strategies to make tangible differences in the world. We may feel uncomfortable working with each other, but it’s either that or an increasingly ruined world. The ethical choice should be clear.
What liberals need to understand is that any efforts challenging systems of power are and will be seen as radical. There’s just no way around it and forging distance from radical counterparts is not only useless, but a betrayal of freedom-fighters before us. We need to remember that Rosa Parks’ hero was Malcolm X. We need to remember that Gandhi was successful because he was easier to negotiate with than Bhagat Singh’s militants. Neutrality is complicity and it’s time to take sides: one hand is the small group of capitalist monsters profiting off of misery and on the other is anyone willing to resist injustice.
Recently, I had a conversation with a member of the Democratic Party which highlights how far from solidarity many liberals have strayed. Upon meeting, he asked what I did. “I’m a writer,” I said. About what, he wondered? “Radical social change,” I told him. And the next fifteen minutes, up until the point I politely left, saw him adamantly discouraging me from using such a confrontational and extremist term as “radical.” My claims that this desperate time calls for radical responses fell on deaf ears, because how desperate can anything be with a Democrat in the White House? In hindsight, I wish I would’ve reminded him just how radical the movements have been that are now allowing for black, female, and homosexual candidates from his Party to get in office.
What radicals need to understand is that what is most militant is not always what is right, both in terms of strategy and morality. And sometimes it is. Power only changes by force, but force can take many different forms. Suffragists lobbied and campaigned for women to get the vote, but when that wasn’t working, they added sabotage to their arsenal. Simultaneously used, their tactics proved part of an ultimately successful strategy. Both approaches were radical because they applied force, but they were employed in very specific times and contexts. Strategy allows us to choose between tactics with a lens of pragmatism rather than by whim of emotion. Whatever actions are taken, they must be well thought out and conducted with discipline.
Too many radicals today fall into the trap of black-and-white thinking. They see bad institutions and therefore all institutions are bad. They see useless reforms and therefore all reforms are useless. They see poor leadership, and therefore no leadership is better.
Radical or liberal, we really need it all. We need the community organizers, the gardeners, the healers, the warriors, and the artists. Most of all, we need to each other’s work as necessary pieces of the larger struggle.
Regardless of our route, activists need to always remember the world we’re working towards. Solutions will come only after we honestly name the problems. This means we cannot look away from the severity of the situation, even if it doesn’t make us feel good. Social change is about social change and not about any individual’s emotional state. Suffering is real and it beckons us to fashion adequate responses.
Changing the world means naming the one we’re presently stuck with. It’s time to say this out loud: the problems we face are systemic, not random; they are symptoms of a social and economic arrangement of power. I call that arrangement industrial capitalism. You may call it what you like. What’s important is that we all understand that there is no future in the way things are.
Liberals, radicals, and anyone working towards a more just and sustainable world cannot continue to spend so much time condemning each other’s approaches. There’s a name for this destructive tendency: horizontal hostility. And unless we want to in-fight to the end of the world, it has to stop.
Success will be the forging of a culture of resistance strong and vibrant enough to take apart this society and build a new one. This means vast networks of communities of people supporting each other’s efforts towards a common goal. It means the artists support the warriors who support the healers who support the gardeners who support the community organizers who support the warriors. Not all in a culture of resistance need agree on everything; we just need to pledge that we won’t turn on our own in the heat of the struggle.
For every year, every day, and every moment we don’t act strategically and decisively, another person of color is terrorized by white police officers, another woman is violated by men, another indigenous culture is stamped out, another species is added to the extinction list, the health of human community and the entire planet accelerates in decline.
Those with fire and love in their hearts, those who live by moral obligation, know that the time to act is now. So the question becomes: will you join us in finally and totally changing this world. Is your privilege and comfort more important than justice, or will you join us? Are your ideals more important than the hard truth, or will you join us?
If you want a better world, what are you waiting for? Find your allies, work out your differences, and get down to business.
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.
On March 15th the International Day Against Police Brutality was observed for the first time in Memphis, Tennessee by the Black Autonomy Federation. People came to the event from as far away as Iowa, Ohio, and Denver. People gathered first outside city hall and spoke. Cardboard coffins were lined up facing out from city hall representing 13 of the 14 people killed by the Memphis Police Department in the last thirteen months.
Women have also been sexually assaulted by the Memphis police officers. JoNina Ervin, acting chair of the Black Autonomy Federation stated that they have been told by a number of women that there are police in Memphis that arrest women and force them to have sex with them, “That’s the kind of police we have here. This is a corrupt police department and a police department out of control.”
Lorenzo Ervin of the BAF stated that “We have out right atrocities that no one of these people can defend but the authorities here, the city authorities as well as the state prosecutors are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up and not to prosecute these crimes by the police, the authorities and others working in concert with them. This is why it is important for us to bring attention to the city of Memphis, Tennessee.”
People later chanted and marched to the Memphis police department and the Shelby County Jail. Activists and family members of those murdered spoke out. In attendance was the family of Delois Epps and Makayla Ross who were killed on August 26th leaving from a family get-together by a police officer Alex Beard. Thirty- three year old family member Shaquitta Epps asks “Why wasn’t he charged?” When asked if she was surprised by the response of the city and police department towards her family members death she responded “No it happens all the time but I never thought it would happen to my family. You see it in the paper and on the TV but you never really know until it happens to your family.”
Martin Ezsutton brother of twenty-two year old Rekia Boyd who was killed in Chicago by police officer Dante Servin stated that “The police were highly disrespectful.” Servin is not being charged with the murder and is being paid working a desk job that pays 90,000 dollars. “He just got a promotion for murdering my sister!…Who is going to take responsibility? They failed to prosecute him for his actions.”
Unfortunately the deaths of black people by the police in Memphis and across the country are not a rare occurrence with a rate of one black person every 36 hours being killed by the police in the United States (“Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 120 black people” Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, July 2012)
The next day a conference was held to discuss how to organize against police brutality and killings with activists from various communities. The BAF discussed the ongoing police killings and brutality in the context of the capitalist state. Lorenzo states that “ We understand we are not just fighting the police we are fighting fascism.” The BAF is calling for an international boycott against the town of Memphis until it “stops persecuting and killing poor working class black people and consorting with the KKK.”
On March 30th the Black Autonomy Federation are organizing a counter protest against the KKK. The Klan are prompted to come because of a name change of Nathan Bedford Forest Park to Health Science Park. Forest was the first grand wizard of the Klan. According to JoNina Ervin the city has been uncooperative with their efforts to organize an anti Klan rally. “There is a media campaign telling people to stay home, don’t come out, ignore the Klan, and the line they are using is that any person that comes out is crazy. They want to criminalize the people who are protesting the Klan when the Klan are the real criminals.”
According to members of the BAF the NAACP has been collaborating with the state in this. “The head of the NAACP in Memphis said on TV, people should stay home and wash their cars and shook hands with the Sons of the Confederacy. The constitution gives people first amendment rights they will have police to protect them but people opposed to the terrorism of the KKK are just supposed to shut up that day. They want us to be off in a corner some place. The city has been in collaboration with these neo confederates for so long.” For JoNina and others in the BAF, it is crucial for people in Memphis and from all over the country to come and take a stand against the Klan, “If you don’t let the Klan know that you’re here and opposed to their white supremacy, that gives them free range to keep on coming back here and that is why they keep coming back.”
If you would like to get in contact with the Black Autonomy Federation or offer support, please contact them at Organize.the.hood@gmail.com.
Amazon Indians from Peru and Brazil have joined together to stop a Canadian oil company destroying their land and threatening the lives of uncontacted tribes.
Hundreds of Matsés Indians gathered on the border of Peru and Brazil last Saturday and called on their governments to stop the exploration, warning that the work will devastate their forest home.
The oil giant Pacific Rubiales is headquartered in Canada and has already started oil exploration in ‘Block 135’ in Peru, which lies directly over an area proposed as an uncontacted tribes reserve.
In a rare interview with Survival, a Matsés woman said, ‘Oil will destroy the place where our rivers are born. What will happen to the fish? What will the animals drink?’
The Matsés number around 2,200 and live along the Peru-Brazil border. Together with the closely-related Matis tribe, they were known as the ‘Jaguar people’ for their facial decorations and tattoos, which resembled the jaguar’s whiskers and teeth.
The Matsés were first contacted in the 1960s, and have since suffered from diseases introduced by outsiders. Uncontacted tribes are also at extreme risk from contact with outsiders through the introduction of diseases to which they have little or no immunity.
Despite promising to protect the rights of its indigenous citizens, the Peruvian government has allowed the $36 million project to go ahead. Contractors will cut hundreds of miles of seismic testing lines through the forest home of the uncontacted tribes, and drill exploratory wells.
The government has also granted a license for oil explorations to go ahead in ‘Block 137’, just north of ‘Block 135’, which lies directly on Matsés land. Despite massive pressure from the company, the tribe is firmly resisting the oil company’s activities in their forest.
The effects of oil work are also likely to be felt across the border in Brazil’s Javari Valley, home to several other uncontacted tribes, as seismic testing and the construction of wells threaten to pollute the headwaters of several rivers on which the tribes depend.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, ‘The Canadian state was founded on the theft of tribal land. When Europeans invaded Canada, they introduced alien diseases, seized control of natural resources, and brought about the extinction of entire peoples. It’s a great irony that a Canadian company today is poised to commit the same crimes against tribes in Peru. Why doesn’t the Peruvian government uphold its own commitments to tribal rights? History tells us that when uncontacted peoples’ land is invaded, death, disease and destruction follow.’
As a radical black male living in the most hegemonic culture to ever exist, I consistently find myself keenly aware of instances in daily life to recognize and critique white supremacy. I have experienced firsthand this culture’s systemic racism. From the racist and sexist police department which harassed and conspired against my mother while she worked for them, to the fairly routine instances of micro-aggressions, racial profiling and predatory business practices all people of color endure in this culture, I have a personal relationship with oppression informing my analysis of racism. So when whites accuse people of color of being unable to let go of the past, they are missing some critical considerations.
Many whites have a difficult time accepting any attempt to redistribute wealth and resources to historically oppressed classes because they fail to see the reality of life as a person of color in this society. And when our stories are silenced, the dominant narrative of this culture can proliferate.
So I want to speak directly to whites who honestly believe society is post-racial and that they are being oppressed. I want you to listen and try to understand if you can.
One of white supremacy’s more insidious aspects is that it has perfected the art of double-speak. While it appears you are saying society is post-racial and we are all equal now, and therefore any redistribution of resources to historically oppressed classes is reverse racism, what you are really saying is the comfort and safety which was a result of a historically privileged position in society as leech members of a parasitic class of people is being challenged, and that makes you uncomfortable.
You want to know what I mean with that statement. Dominant classes of people are parasites, because they feed on the oppression of others. Whether or not you realize it, if you are a member of a dominant class, you are benefiting from the oppression of another class.
As a man, I benefit from patriarchy and misogyny. Members of my class of people are leeches, and that makes me a leech as well. It is my responsibility as an aspiring male ally to women to constantly critique my own participation in this culture and to do whatever I can to deconstruct the sexist and misogynistic tendencies I possess from this culture’s indoctrination. That is the minimal task of an ally, and the same applies to whites who wish to ally with people of color to combat racism. You must first admit your complicity in it.
Whiteness is hegemony. To be clear, race does not exist inherently – it is a social construct with no basis in actual biology other than the melanin levels in your skin and its relationship to how your ancestors evolved on their preferred landbase. The creation of race was a direct result of the hegemonic tendency inherent in parasitic classes of people.
“White” is purported to be related to skin color and ancestry, but what is it really? A social class. If race is not actually real, then we must consider more real, tangible indicators of difference and their real effects on the material conditions of our everyday lives. When we search for other indicators, the most glaringly obvious one is privilege and access to resources. By far, without doubt, whites own more land and possessions, earn a higher income, and experience far fewer discriminatory experiences than people of color.
It is important to understand what it means to view racial oppression in the context of class analysis. Whiteness is a class experience, and not based in biological reality. But that does not mean one can just decide to stop being white, just like I cannot decide to stop being a man as long as the dominant culture classes me as a man. As long as you are classed as white, you will continue to benefit from white privilege. This is what allies need to remember.
The identity of persons of color serves the purpose of organizing through common cause. For my culture, black identity is about survival, not about superiority or a desire to exercise power over whites. It is a response to cultural genocide, an example of class consciousness as the starting point in combating oppression. As stated in Racial Formations in the United States:
Whites tend to locate racism in color consciousness and find its absence color-blindness. In so doing, they see the affirmation of difference and racial identity among racially defined minority students as racist. Non-white students, by contrast, see racism as a system of power, and correspondingly argue that blacks, for example, cannot be racist because they lack power.
When people of color are afforded opportunities on the basis of their skin color, this is not racism. It is redistribution of the privilege of access to resources, an attempt to even the playing field that is skewed towards whites.
If you think past racism has no effect on today’s reality, you are in denial. Your ancestors were given a huge head start because they were not enslaved and they did not suffer under white supremacist Jim Crow laws and murderous gangs of thugs in white sheets and hoods. They did not suffer under the tyranny of the White Citizen’s Council, or the 3/5 law, or the Fugitive Slave Law. They did not suffer under the Tuskegee Experiments, the Japanese internment camps, the ghettos and reservations and racist police departments.
To be white in this society is to start ahead, even if you are poor. The poorest white is still privileged in ways the middle class black person is not. Rich, wealthy and affluent blacks are still racially profiled and discriminated against in various ways.
The dominant narrative of this culture – that of the white patriarch – forbids redistribution of resources and privilege, because that would mean the empowerment of historically oppressed classes, affording them a little more ability to even the score. So this culture must adjust the narrative to encourage backlash against resistance to white supremacy, otherwise the narrative of the resistance will proliferate and threaten to turn the tide in our favor. So it convinces privileged members they are being discriminated against, and that they should not consider or listen to or even hear the stories of people of color, because goddess forbid you have your identity challenged for once. You cry reverse racism and deny the presence of the same tendencies of the past because you have never lived in our world.
Of course, redistribution of resources is not the end goal. We must ultimately bring down the capitalist, industrial infrastructure facilitating white supremacist oppression of people of color. We must permanently disable the control mechanisms of the culture – the police, the military and the media – because they all play a role in the subordination of people of color, the theft of their resources and the erasure of their cultures and stories.
A comprehensive anti-racist strategy includes a critique of civilization itself. It recognizes civilization as the interlocking systems of oppression inherent in infinite growth economies. It realizes the colonial, imperialist agenda of empires as being intimately connected to the white supremacist tendency, and as being the stumbling block to real autonomy and self-determination for people of color. And it relates the destruction of the natural world to the destruction of cultural diversity among human populations.
My people are being killed in the streets, incarcerated, enslaved and denigrated, and any analysis avoiding this reality is dishonest and immoral. If we are going to attempt to “speak truth to power,” we had better at least speak the truth, regardless whether or not people are ready to hear it. We do not have time to wait for people to “get it.” We needed militant action a hundred years ago. We are far into complete biotic collapse and continued genocide of non-white cultures. We must act now to rid the planet of this scourge and ensure it never returns.
The term Anthropocene not only doesn’t help us stop this culture from killing the planet – it contributes directly to the problems it purports to address.
First, it’s grossly misleading. Humans aren’t the ones “transforming” – read, killing – the planet. Civilized humans are. There’s a difference. It’s the difference between old growth forests and New York City, the difference between 60 million bison on a vast plain and pesticide- and herbicide-laden fields of genetically modified corn. It’s the difference between rivers full of salmon and rivers killed by hydroelectric dams. It’s the difference between cultures whose members recognize themselves as one among many and members of this culture, who convert everything to their own use.
To be clear, the Tolowa Indians lived where I now live for at least 12,500 years, and when the first of the civilized arrived the place was a paradise. Now, 170 years later, the salmon are being driven extinct, redwoods have been reduced to 2 percent of their range, and the fields (formerly forests) are full of toxins.
To be even more clear: Humans don’t destroy landbases. Civilized humans destroy landbases, and they have been doing so since the beginning of civilization. One of the first written myths is of Gilgamesh deforesting what is now Iraq – cutting down cedar forests so thick the sunlight never touched the ground, all so he could make a great city and, more to the point, so he could make a great name for himself.
All of this is crucial, because perpetrators of atrocity so often attempt to convince themselves and everyone else that what they’re doing is natural or right. The word “Anthropocene” attempts to naturalize the murder of the planet by pretending the problem is “man,” and not a specific type of man connected to this particular culture.
The name also manifests the supreme narcissism that has characterized this culture from the beginning. Of course members of this culture would present their behavior as representing “man” as a whole. The other cultures have never really existed anyway, except as lesser breeds who are simply in the way of getting access to resources.
Using the term Anthropocene feeds into that narcissism. Gilgamesh destroyed a forest and made a name for himself. This culture destroys a planet and names a geologic age after itself. What a surprise.
They say one sign of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. Well, members of this culture must not be very smart. We’ve had 6,000 years to recognize the pattern of genocide and ecocide fueled by this culture’s narcissism and sociopathy, and the behavior is simply getting worse. Members of this culture have had 6,000 years to recognize that the cultures they’re conquering have often been sustainable. And still they come up with this name that attempts to include all humanity in their own despicable behavior.
The narcissism extends beyond disbelieving that other cultures exist. It includes believing that nothing else on the planet fully exists, either. It’s like the bumper sticker says: “We’re not the only species on Earth: We just act like it.” I recently heard an astronomer trying to explain why it’s important to explore Mars. The exploration will, he said, “answer that most important question of all: Are we all alone?” On a planet brimming with beautiful life (for now), he asks this question? I have a more important question. Is he insane? The answer is yes. He’s a narcissist, and a sociopath.
Of course members of this culture, who have named themselves with no shred of irony or humility Homo sapiens, would, as they murder the planet, declare this the age of man.
The Anthropocene gives no hint of the horrors this culture is inflicting. “The Age of Man”? Oh, that’s nice. We’re number one, right? Instead, the name must be horrific, it must produce shock and shame and outrage commensurate with this atrocity of killing the planet. It must call us to differentiate ourselves from this culture, to show that this label and this behavior do not belong to us. It must call us to show that we do not deserve it. It must call us to say and mean, “Not one more Indigenous culture driven from its land, and not one more species driven extinct!”
If we’re going to name this age, let’s at least be honest and accurate. Can I suggest, “The Age of the Sociopath”?
A two-day teach-in focused on community organizing, activism, direct action, and issues facing Utah communities comes to Salt Lake City the weekend of March 16th and 17th.
The event, “Communities of Resistance,” will feature presentations and trainings from Goshute Tribal Chairman Ed Naranjo, community organizer and filmmaker Simón Sedillo, Peaceful Uprising, Utah Tar Sands Resistance, Deep Green Resistance, Idle No More, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and other community organizers.
“This teach-in will be indispensable for political people around Salt Lake,” said event organizer Max Wilbert. “If we want to win sustainability and social justice, we need supportive communities that nurture a willingness to fight. This is a step toward that goal.”
Subjects covered will include hands-on training for non-violent civil disobedience, the SNWA Las Vegas water pipeline that is poised to destroy rural valleys and indigenous peoples of Western Utah, the proposed Utah Tar Sands project, and community organizing in Mexico to defend traditional peoples from logging, drug syndicates, and government exploitation.
Communities of Resistance will take place between 10am to 4pm on Saturday, March 16th, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday, March 16th, at the Federation of Mexican Clubs, 344 Goshen Street, Salt Lake City.
The organizers are asking for a suggested donation of $5 – $10, with all proceeds going to the Unist’ot’en Camp, a First Nations group in Canada that is blocking construction of Tar Sands and “fracking” pipelines across their traditional lands, and the Tar Sands Blockade, a group with is using sustained direct action to halt the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
The event is sponsored by the Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and Decolonize SLC.
