I would like to preface my remarks on the transformation of silence into language and action with a poem. The title of it is “A Song For Many Movements” and this reading is dedicated to Winnie Mandela. Winnie Mandela is a South African freedom fighter who is in exile somewhere in South Africa. She had been in prison and had been released and was picked up again after she spoke out against the recent jailing of black school children who were singing freedom songs and who were charged with public violence… “A Song for Many Movements.”
Nobody wants to die on the way
and caught between ghosts of whiteness
and the real water
none of us wanted to leave
our bones
on the way to salvation
three planets to the left
a century of light years ago
our spices are separate and particular
but our skins sine in complimentary keys
at a quarter to eight mean time
we were telling the same stories
over and over and over.
Broken down gods survive
in the crevasses and mudpots
of every beleaguered city
where it is obvious
there are too many bodies
to cart to the ovens
or gallows
and our uses have become
more important than our silence
after the fall
too many empty cases
of blood to bury or burn
there will be no body left
to listen
and our labor
has become more important
than our silence
Our labor has become
more important
than our silence.
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.
I am standing here as a black lesbian poet, and the meaning of all that wait upon the fact that I am still alive, and might not have been. Less than two months ago I was told by two doctors, one female and one male that I would have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80% chance that the tumour was malignant.
Between that telling and the actual surgery there was a three week period of the agony of an involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The surgery was completed, and the growth was benign.
But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women, by some of you here today. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action.
Confronting Mortality
In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly edged in a merciless light, and what I most regretted with my silences.
Of what I had ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could’ve meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end.
Death on the other hand is the final silence and that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into perspective gave me great strength.
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I have ever spoken myself. My silence has not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real spoken word, for every attempt I have ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.
The women who sustained me throughout that period were black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual, and we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived intact.
Casualty and Warrior
Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge – within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not – I am not only casualty, I am also a warrior.
What the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself – a black woman warrior poet doing my work and come to ask you, are you doing yours?
And of course I am afraid because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.
But my daughter when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”
Silence and Fear
In the cause of silence each of us draws the face of her own fear-fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgement or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation.
But most of all, I think we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live. Within this country where racial difference creates constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision, black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism. Even within the women’s movement, we have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our blackness.
For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings and neither were most of you here today, black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our Earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles and we will still be no less afraid.
In my house this year we are celebrating the feast of Kwanzaa, The African-American Festival of harvest which begins the day after Christmas and lasts for seven days. There are seven principles, one for each day. The first principle is Umoja, which means unity, the decision to strive for and maintain unity in self and community. The principle for yesterday, the second day was Kujichagulia -self-determination – the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others.
Today is the third day and the principle for today is Umija, collective work and responsibility-the decision to build and maintain ourselves and our communities together and to recognize and solve our problems together. Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us.
The Transformation of Silence Into Action
In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.
For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us but primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths by which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.
And it is never without fear – of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgement, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.
And where the words of women are crying to be heard we must each other’s recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinent to our lives.
That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own. For instance “I can’t possibly teach black women’s writing on their experience is so different from mine.” Yet how many years have you spent teaching Plato and Shakespeare and processed? Or another, “she is a white woman and what could she possibly have to say to me?“ Or, “she’s a lesbian, what would my husband say, or my chairman?“ Or again, “this woman writes of her sons and I have no children.“
And all the other endless ways in which we rob ourselves and each other we can learn to speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learnt to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words in an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference that which immobilizes us, but silence.
And there are so many silences to be broken.
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and homophobia.
Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé and Lenape) was the author of Columbus and Other Cannibals, one of the most important books ever written. In this excerpt, edited slightly for publication, he offers the reader analysis of the nature and origins of evil in human beings. Image depicts former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. <
The Origins of Evil in Human Beings.
For several thousands of years human beings have suffered from a plague, a disease worse than leprosy, a sickness worse than malaria, a malady much more terrible than smallpox.
The disease that is overrunning the world is the disease of aggression against other living things and, more precisely, the disease of the consuming of other creature’s lives and possessions. It is cannibalism, a cannibal psychosis, and it is the greatest epidemic sickness known to humans.
Cannibalism is the consuming of another’s life for one’s own private purpose or profit.
A cannibal is an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts, including cannibalism. The slaver who forces blacks or Indians to lose their lives in the slave-trade or who drains away their lives in a slave system is a cannibal.
They may ‘eat’ other people immediately or they may ‘eat’ their flesh gradually over a period of years. The wealthy exploiter ‘eats’ the flesh of oppressed workers, the wealthy matron ‘eats’ the lives of her servants, the imperialist ‘eats’ the flesh of the conquered, and so on. The wealthy and exploitative literally consume the lives of those they exploit.
The overriding character of the cannibal is that it consumes other lives, that is, it is a predator. Somehow, cannibals believe that they have a right to use another’s life (or their property) in a manner which is decidedly one-sided and disadvantageous to the victim.
Predation can lurk under many guises, such as ‘patriotism,’ profit-seeking, ‘protecting our way of life,’ and ‘investment returns.’
Lying
Lying is almost always a factor in cannibal behavior. Lying and petty thievery, hustling, ‘wheeling and dealing,’ cheating, usury, and so on are all symptoms of a cannibal. In a cannibal society, the common training of large numbers of people is that of a hustler. The individual may learn to be a hustler in business, or in school, or in scientific research, or in politics, but their basic attitude is one of fierce competition to ‘get ahead’ of other people.
There are many psychological traits that help form the cannibal personality. Greed, lust, inordinate ambition, materialism, the lack of a true ‘face,’ a schizoid (split) personality, and so on, are all terms which can be used to describe most cannibals.
Arrogance
One of the major traits characterizing the truly evil and extreme form of cannibalism is arrogance.
Arrogance is a key trait of the cannibal or of a person liable to become a cannibal. Sadism and cruelty are closely related to cannibal behavior. The option of being sadistic and cruel is available to people in the cannibal world, and what is more, being sadistic and cruel can even be made to appear as being patriotic, good, or even pious. Thus the sane become insane, and the crazed become rulers!
‘Scientific’ experimenters on animals, social workers intimidating poor people, bureaucrats being rude to ‘common’ people who dare to approach their desks, teachers treating pupils with mental cruelty, and so on, are using disguised means of expressing the sadistic derangement fostered by the cannibal world.
Imperialism
Imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil.
Imperialists, rapists, and exploiters are not just people who have strayed down a wrong path. They are insane (unclean) in the true sense of that word. They are mentally ill with the cannibal psychosis. The rape of a woman, the rape of a land, and the rape of a people, they are all the same. And they are the same as the rape of the earth, the rape of the rivers, the rape of the forest, the rape of the air, the rape of the animals. Brutality knows no boundaries, greed knows no limits, perversion knows no borders, arrogance knows no frontiers, deceit knows no edges. These characteristics all tend to push towards an extreme, always moving forward once the initial infection sets in.
The cannibal psychosis is a very contagious and rapidly spreading disease. It is spread by the cannibals themselves as they recruit or corrupt others. It is spread today by history books, television, military training programs, police training programs, comic books, pornographic magazines, films, right-wing movements, fanatics of various kinds, high-pressure missionary groups, and numerous governments.
Contagion
The cannibal disease, the sickness of exploitation, has been spreading as a contagion for the past several thousand years.
And as a contagion unchecked by most vaccines it tends to become worse rather than better with time. More and more people catch it, in more and more places, and they become the true teachers of the young. Exploitation is thriving. The exploitation of children, of love, of women, of old people, of the weak, of the poor, and, of course, the intentional commercial exploitation of every conceivable thing, from the hair around women’s vaginal areas, to worry over natural body odors, to adolescent insecurity, to the fear of growing old, to thirst (for example, persuading people to drink liquid chemicals and sugar in place of water or natural beverages).
The cannibal psychosis is a sickness of the spirit that takes people down an ugly path with no heart. They may kill, but they are not warriors. They may learn skills, but they acquire no wisdom. They may be surrounded by death but they do not, or cannot, learn its message. They chase after the riches or rewards of a transient world and delude themselves into believing that big tombs and monuments can make it permanent.
A pimp is someone who follows other people’s orders, follows someone else’s path, and who refuses to take responsibility for what they do. Such a person cannot be authentic. Such a person is not merely a pimp, they are also a ghost, a mere imitation of a person. Their life is an imitation of life, lacking solidity and realness. The cannibal world is full of such pimps and ghosts. The cannibal world believes in the use of tricks, constant opportunism, ‘situational ethics,’ life adjustment, personality adjustment, wheeling and dealing, double standards, and plain fakery. Such a life of deception and rootlessness leads easily into pimpery.
Civilization
To a considerable degree, the development of the cannibal disease corresponds to the rise of civilization.
Cannibal civilizations are (usually) societies with large slave populations, rigid social class systems, unethical or ruthless rulers, and aggressive, imperialistic foreign policies. Colonialist-imperialist systems seek to create cannibals. They recruit them because colonialism is maintained by means of properly controlled cannibal behavior. More especially, they need to recruit cannibals from within the native population in order to keep that group divided, exploited, and in a hopeless frame of mind.
Colonialists spread notions of racial and cultural superiority and transform hitherto free people into super-chickens (as it were) with an especially brutal pecking order. This pecking order (ranks, social classes, castes, and so on) is what maintains the system of exploitation and degrades the masses who become its victims. Such systems are a form of physical and psychological terrorism. When conquered people are reduced to a state of impotency, poverty, and despair, certain individuals will decide that survival depends upon cooperation with the exploiters. Slowly but surely, if they are especially aggressive or ambitions, they may come to see that there are ways to make money, get favored jobs, or obtain jobs for relatives, by becoming dishonest and corrupt. One of the tragic characteristics of the cannibal psychosis is that it spreads partly by resistance to it.
Assimilation
Those who try to fight cannibals sometimes, in order to survive, adopt cannibal values.
Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called on to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.
The material prosperity within successfully imperialistic societies, especially for middle-class and upper-class citizens, unfortunately serves to not only hide internal decay but also to blunt people’s desires for truth, justice, and personal authenticity. Even when obvious examples of wrong-doing appear, the bulk of the citizenry will refuse to take any action, in some cases because of a fear of reprisal, but more commonly because of a desire to continue to enjoy their prosperity without being disturbed.
Crime
Organized crime, in its many forms, is the most important manner in which the cannibal disease finds concrete expression.
It is true that individual cannibals, operating on their own, may cause great misery at times, but it is much more common for the most brutal aggression to take place as a part of an organized, systematic assault. Organized crime is indeed ugly, corrupting, and brutal. The terror and suffering lurking just beyond the curtain of wealth ultimately enters into even the gardens of the affluent; and, more importantly, that material wealth and power seldom seem to bring to their possessors the spiritual and psychological nourishment which human beings truly need.
True organized crime commences with the state or with state-approved aggression. The difficult and tragic thing about many systems of inhuman exploitation is that they usually are directed by innocent-looking, suave cannibals whose offices are never contaminated by the sweat, blood, and dying flesh of the oppressed.
The cannibal disease is not limited to the brutes and goons who handle the gun, the lash, or the instruments of torture. The nice people in the offices, the typists, the lab technicians, the clerks, and, of course, the owners, directors, stockholders, senators, generals, and presidents who use, profit from, and feed on human exploitation are also cannibals to one degree or another. The most guilty of the cannibals are those who mastermind, justify, and profit most from such systems. Such persons are the ‘master predators.’
Many people in the capitalist and communist worlds are not Real. Many are puppets or pimps, whose strings are pulled by others or who follow a life-path dictated by others. Thus they are ripe for the cannibal infection. Imperialism, predation, and cannibalism, as diseases of culture, seek to militarize societies.\
Degradation
Part of the process of creating a cannibal world is the sustained effort to brutalize the sensibilities of human beings.
In part, this has been (and is) accomplished by denying the spiritual character of humans and other living creatures and by treating them in a demeaning manner. An important aspect of the cannibal sickness is the apparent drive of some, especially scholars and university people, to de-sanctify that which has been regarded as holy and sacred, or beautiful and spiritual, especially for non-cannibals. The significance of de-sanctifying the earth, the animals, the plants, the trees, and even human beings is that the world is made a potentially ugly and very exploitable place.
A cannibal society seeks to prevent people (except for a select few) from pursuing their own spiritual fulfillment since the economy and the politics or such a society requires masses of laborers who live a regulated, predictable, conformist life.
Alcohol
‘Obedience’ is the objective, not true ‘salvation.’
Alcohol is a universal weapon of the cannibal. Exploitative and imperialistic programs may become very popular in countries where an improved material standard of living is believed to be dependent upon aggression. The systematic use of terror seems to have been developed as a control and domination strategy for many ancient empires, especially during their expansionistic phases or when faced by unhappy subject peoples.
Cannibals often leave a record of murder and terror that is shocking in the extreme. And the people who usually suffer the most are honest, simple, democratic people of the world, the non-materialistic, the freedom-loving, and the truly spiritual. These people are precisely lacking in the insane desires and delusions which motivate the cannibal. (Non-cannibals may, at times, be cruel, but their cruelty is individual and sporadic, not part of a system of cruelty). Folk peoples are the targets for intensive programs of social change engineered by cooperating teams of missionaries, armies, pacification squads, so-called ‘developers,’ and others.
Class Society
One of the essential characteristics of cannibalistic-imperialistic societies is that each social class seeks to exploit those below it.
In a cannibal society, all those who lack physical-material power will be exploited or abused. The cannibal world creates an intensive propaganda system designed to perpetuate the values of such a system. A facet of organized systems of aggression is that the governments, syndicates, corporations, or groups controlling or profiting from such behavior also control the greater part of the organs of public opinion modification. Patriotism, sectarian fervor, news, and propaganda are often used to justify aggression, genocide, slavery, and torture, and also to make the masses willing (or even anxious) participants.
The subjugation of women and their use as means instead of ends is part and parcel of the cannibal psychosis. There is a close correlation between the rise of patriarchal societies and the rise of imperialism and cannibal behavior. In systems that oppress women an element of the cannibal disease is certainly present. In many societies where exploitation reigns supreme, a hierarchical class system ordinarily exists and at every level, although in somewhat different ways, women are controlled and prevented from realizing their full potential. Occasionally, a queen or empress may be the titular or even active head of a male-dominated system.
Male Domination
Terrorism is a male disease.
The madness of violence, aggression, war, assault, rape, murder, conquest, dominance, and terrorism is, overwhelmingly, an insanity that strikes males primarily. Women can, of course, be vicious and mean, and they can goad men into violent action, but the kind of anger and sheer destructiveness that typifies the aggressive male rarely finds a female counterpart. Many of the cannibals are socialized by a society which has extremely negative attitudes towards sex (and which sees sex as a form of aggression, often against women), and which cultivates various forms of cruelty and sadism.
Male dominance typifies a number of major religions, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Orthodox Judaism, Islam, Southern Baptists in the U.S., Northern Ireland Presbyterians, and Sikhism, Hinduism, and Shinto. Only within indigenous religious traditions can one find major female leadership and participation accepted widely. The union of male religion with male military dominance has been an all too frequent problem among human beings. The result is the suppression of dissent and, perhaps, of the original core of the religion in question.
It is terribly dangerous when major societies and its movements are ruled by men only or primarily, because male behavior is, historically, all too predictable. From the raping of women, to the raping of countries, to the raping of the world. Acts of aggression, of hate, of conquest, of empire-building.
No discussion of terrorism, school violence, domestic abuse, war and peace, or crime should take place without confronting the world-wide phenomena of male dominance-seeking and violence.
Folk cultures have tended to be the most friendly to women, until very modern times. Perhaps this is because ‘empires’ and hegemonic systems (larger and larger organizations, states, churches, sects) are almost always the creation of men or cultures dominated by a male drive for power, expansion, dominance, and exclusivity. (And the ultimate exclusivity is the blasphemous claim of a group of males to possess the exclusive pathway to contact with the deity, for example, God, Allah, Jehovah, and so on).
Overpopulation appears to be a direct result of the creation of cannibal-dominated societies. Perhaps this results from the degradation of women in a cannibal system, or perhaps it correlates with the disintegration of traditional folk values, or perhaps it is stimulated by the need of industrialists, generals, and dictators for continual supplies of cannon-fodder and cheap labor. The cannibal disease seems to flourish in overpopulation. And in the slums, factory towns, and crowded countryside, babies, violence, hustling, prostitution, hunger, malnutrition, alcoholism, dope addiction, and fear often live side by side in a fertile culture of demoralization controlled only by prisons and monstrous armed forces. But of course the ‘big cannibals’ do not live in these slums, rural or urban. They live, as they always have, in fancy houses or apartments, guarded by the security forces whose salaries they pay.
The Cannibal’s Ten Commandments:
Thou shalt make a profit.
Thou shalt disown thy parents when they become old and send them away to perish alone; but thou shalt put on an expensive funeral for appearances sake.
Thou shalt deceive with false looks and flattering words, for appearances are everything.
Thou shalt gather to thyself alone as many material things as thou can obtain.
Thou shalt save and hoard, sharing not with others unless for thy own self-interest.
Thou shalt adulterate the foods which people eat, and deprive them of healthy sustenance.
Thou shalt take whatever thou can from the forest, from the earth, from the air, or from the defenseless and weak.
Thou shalt kill whenever it profits thee, and thou shalt exalt killing and violence since all progress results therefrom.
Thou shalt be arrogant, aggressive, and bold since such qualities insure success.
Thou shalt not worry about thy sins for the Almighty has arranged a means whereby thou can be forgiven, even at thy death bed.
You shall know a tree by its fruit and by its fruit the cannibal world stands condemned.
Jack D. Forbes (January 7, 1934 – February 23, 2011) was an Powhatan-Renapé and Lenape indigenous writer, scholar and political activist, who specialized in Native American issues. He is best known for his role in establishing one of the first Native American Studies programs (at University of California Davis). His book Columbus and Other Cannibals (1978) is foundational to the anti-civilization movement. Forbes analysis of civilization enabled readers, listeners and learners across decades to understand the systems that enable terrorism, genocide, and ecocide.
Rage and violence are exploding in the streets of the United States. Eleven people have been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands arrested over the last week.
Police are running wild, attacking and injuring non-violent protesters, journalists, and bystanders in their rush to protect private property. A revolt on this scale has not seen since the Holy Week Uprising of 1968 after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.
What recourse do people have when they are locked out of the mainstream political process, victimized economically, and abused and murdered on the streets?
In this article we offer a clear outline of the equipment needed to sustain direct action of different types and highlight the importance of training, discipline, preparation, and good quality gear.
Equipment for Scouting and Action
The effectiveness of any organized direct action is dependent on leadership, planning, skills, and coordination. Equipment can also play an important role.
Many activists, organizers, and everyday people who show up to conflict zones don’t pay attention to equipment or skills. Most people dress in cotton t-shirts, jeans, impractical shoes, and so on. They are not prepared to take serious action, or to be confronted with serious police and vigilante violence, and instead treat protesting and resistance as a social activity.
In some circumstances, this is ok. Many protests and actions are most effective as family-friendly activities that do not involve direct confrontation. But even activities like this increasingly need protection from violent police and vigilantes. And increasingly, more serious action is required to dismantle the power base of the ruling class.
Serious resisters and revolutionaries cannot afford to be lax.
Police, military, and private security forces tend to be highly prepared compared to resistance movements. They wear specialized boots and equipment belts with radios, handcuffs, pepper spray, flashlights, and handguns. They wear gloves, high-performance clothing, and body armor. Most have face protection or at least sunglasses, and sometimes they may have shields as well. They are coordinated and ready to move and react in any direction.
When an individual member of the resistance, or better yet, a trained and organized team, has skills and the equipment, a whole range of new possibilities opens up. We gain freedom of action.
Don’t underestimate the importance of good quality gear. It can allow you to function effectively in a range of situations. We recommend that individuals purchase and maintain their own equipment for a variety of different scenarios. Here are a number of considerations while considering gear.
General Gear
Any mission will require a general set of basic equipment, such as appropriate footwear, clothing, backpack, food and water for the day, etc. You will also need to ensure effective communication with your fellow activists.
Mission Specific Equipment
Specific missions will require specific gear. For example, you may need materials to build a blockade such as a shovel, saw, drill and screws, etc.. To drop a banner, you may need rope, carabiners and a harness; to breach a barrier—bolt cutters, hacksaw; observe or record from afar, binoculars, camera, etc. To protect an individual or a location you may need self-defense weapons. When facing police violence, you may need helmet, goggles, etc. You need to select your gear based on the situation.
How to Select Gear
Cost: Select gear based on a priority list of critical and mission essential gear first.
Availability: You may want it but it isn’t available, for whatever reason. Determine good substitutions.
Quality: Much of the gear should be excellent quality because your life or liberty may depend on it. Some gear isn’t as crucial. It depends on the specific situation. Set standards for what you need in your gear before buying.
Durability: The gear will be used under the worst conditions so don’t expect cheap dollar store gear to hold up under field conditions.
Multi-purpose: Finding gear that can be used for more than one task increases its value.
Size and Weight Consideration (SAWC): Sometimes good gear is large, bulky, and heavy and impedes mobility. Look for gear that is as compact, light but still functional for the tasks.
Camouflage pattern: Bright shiny items attract the eye and can give you away. Determine the best camouflage pattern for the area of operation. For urban operations choose dull colors instead of camo.
Waterproof: It will rain in the field so gear needs ideally to be water proof.
Shockproof: It will be dropped, kicked, sat on, thrown across the room in frustration or at a threat. It still needs to function after its abuse.
Simplicity: High-tech gear and moving parts will break. Select gear that is simple and robust.
Best achieves the mission: The main purpose of the gear is to assist in successful completion of missions (actions).
Ergonomic: the gear should be both efficient and comfortable. This extends the time frame for use in work. An uncomfortable or inefficient piece of gear will wear down the activist earlier making work harder.
It is important to note that the best gear isn’t always the most expensive, coolest looking, widest advertised or what some other person or group is using. Do buy/access equipment that suits you. So, for instance if you are susceptible to cold or dislike being too warm, figure that in. Do seek the advice of an experienced freedom fighter/activist that has a good level of experience and knowledge in the use and procurement of gear for specific kinds of operations and missions.
The Importance of Training
Once a training plan is developed and the gear is obtained the activist needs to train to standard on the skills and with the gear obtained in order to properly fit, modify, personalize and familiarize with that gear.
When all the gear procurement and initial training is complete a series of exercises, based on all the different operations and likely missions for each, should be conducted. This provides an opportunity for testing to ‘standard’ and evaluating all the common and mission essential tasks to determine if the activists are operationally ready.
Basic Gear List
This is a rough outline of the supplies you can consider carrying for a direct action. This list should be tailored to your specific location, mission, skills, team and environment.
Backpack: comfortable, includes a waist belt for distributing loads, carries weight well, allows you to stay balanced. It should be waterproof, or include a plastic bag to hold things that need to stay dry. Different packs will be needed for different missions. Some missions are best executed with no pack at all. Others will require a day pack with capacity for 20-40L of equipment. Longer missions may require larger packs.
Footwear: sturdy, comfortable shoes suitable for off-trail walking and jogging. Waterproof depending on season. You want sturdy shoes, but the heavier your shoes the faster you will fatigue.
More skill = less gear. This is a case where the stronger your ankles are, the lighter-weight shoes you can wear. However, the rougher the terrain, the more sturdy shoe will be required.
Clothing: must be durable, enable range of movement and be suitable for the climate/weather. Recommend long pants and long sleeves.
Consider everyone at an action wearing the same color of clothing to make it difficult for police to ID individuals.
Consider wearing waterproof layers, insulation layers and whether the clothing sufficient for the evening? What if you get wet? What if it gets windy? What if a storm blows in? Always pack extra socks.
Sunglasses: for eye protection, and to prevent ID via video or pictures. Full headmask/facemask to prevent ID via video or pictures.
A watch.
Bandana: good for multiple uses.
Pocketknife / Multitool / self-defense weapon / Cutting/digging tools: depending on the situation.
Food and water: bring extra, you never know how long an action will last. Will you be ok overnight if you have to miss dinner?
Notebook, pens, map and compass: small button compass for urban.
Binoculars, still and video camera.
Cell phone: leave your personal cell phone at home when scouting, or turn it off and remove battery or place inside a faraday bag before moving to the vicinity of your target location.
Small first aid kit: match to your training.
Flashlight or headlamp: take extra batteries
Cash: don’t use credit/debit cards or mobile payments when scouting or at an action.
Lighter: always good for cold emergencies to be able to start a fire.
Sleeping bag/pad/tent/tarp/bivy for wet weather and a survival kit.
A final word:
Sleep: daily training and specific actions will feel easier with a rested mind and body. Do not underestimate the importance of good quality sleep. Lack of or poor quality sleep impacts on your physical well being. Good quality sleep helps balance your emotional well being, sharpens your reactions and enables your problem solving skills to be at their best.
“Revolution is the sound of your heart still beating. And as long as it is, you have work to do. Do it. Without apology. Do it. Bravely and nobly. Do it. Exist, insist and by all means, resist.”
— Dominique Christina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrAYxWPN6c
Featured image: The Day Miami Burned, by Mike Shaheen. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
The United States is built on a foundation of slavery and indigenous land theft. Racism is deep in the bones of this country. Where there is oppression, there is resistance: the ongoing Minneapolis rebellion against the white supremacist state and police murder has spilled out across the U.S. Deep Green Resistance stands in solidarity with principled resistance by any means necessary.
George Floyd’s Murder: An Act Of White Supremacy
By Jocelyn Crawley
One of the first things that came to my mind when I learned of George Floyd’s ruthless murder was a social theory, typically used to analyze the ideology that undergirds patriarchy: the thought of domination.
According to radical feminists such as Monique Wittig, the thought of domination involves the idea that the ruling class produces the ruling ideas.
These ideas come to support the ruling class’s dominance over all of the other members of society. Within this schema, the thought of domination entails assent to the ruling class (men) imposing limiting ideas on the servant class (women). One of these ideas is the notion that there are two categorically different sexes and that these distinctions entail sociological consequences.
One of the sociological consequences is the naturalization of the division of labor in the family, with this belief functioning as a catalyst for the cult of domesticity and male dominance of the public sphere.
As made plain by this brief summary, the thought of domination ensures that those in power (men) keep those who lack it (women) in a position of subservience and slavishness. Within this type of societal schema, women are vulnerable to and subjected to diverse forms of dehumanization, some of which include rape, domestic violence, pornography, and prostitution.
Dominance and dehumanization:
In addition to functioning as an accurate analysis of how patriarchy works, I believe the thought of domination is directly pertinent to the white supremacist act we witnessed when white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for seven minutes while he was lying face down on the road. The video footage of the incident shows Floyd groaning and repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.” After moaning while lying motionless near the foot of the squad car and being transported into an ambulatory vehicle, Floyd died. The only sense that I can make of this inhumane behavior is that the perpetrators have adopted the dominant society’s values of venerating domination as a desirable way to exist in the world because it enables one to become the abuser rather than the victim of abuse. Within a world predicated on a thought of domination in which whites are the ruling class and can therefore impose their rules on all other racial groups, the abuse they subject black people to frequently goes unquestioned and unpunished.
Lack of consequences:
In recognition of the fact that being a member of a ruling class oftentimes precludes one from experiencing repercussions under the law, the outcomes of George Floyd’s murder should be carefully considered if we are to truly understand how white supremacy works. All four officers involved in the event were terminated. Yet the question that persists in the minds of many protestors is: “Why wasn’t Chauvin arrested?” This was the same question that I came to ask myself after I learned that Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and William Bryan pursued Ahmaud Arbery in a truck while he was running through the neighborhood. Many are familiar with the footage displaying Ahmaud Arbery stumbling to the ground after being shot while Travis McMichael stood by with a shotgun.
Many are familiar with the horror and fear this murder generated in the black community as we realized, once again, men of color are subject to being shot by the police and arrogant white men within local communities. Many are familiar with the stories of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. What many of us are not necessarily familiar with is the logic that makes this heinous, inhumane behavior acceptable. This is why I propose that members of radical communities engage the thought of domination as the ideology that undergirds white supremacy.
It is clear that the primary system of thought that fuels and justifies the type of incomprehensible violence, we see as a product of white supremacy, is the thought of domination.
Domination is defined as the exercise of control or influence over someone or something, or the state of being so controlled. In a contemporary world whose zeitgeist is guided by white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, domination is and must be an integral component of the cultures in which people are immersed.
Principles of mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation may periodically flourish or temporarily gain traction in people’s minds and actions. However, making the regimes of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy work requires that individuals recognize and respond to the realities created by those regimes. The reality that the regimes require is that an elite few exert extreme power over the masses, and that the masses respond to their own oppression by amassing as much agency and authority to themselves as possible while they grapple with the dehumanization and self-alienation engendered by the systems of oppression as distinct entities and a composite whole.
As one distinct component of the contemporary regime, white supremacy is predicated on the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially blacks.
Based on this false notion of superiority, whites come to believe (whether consciously or unconsciously) that they have a right to dominate society. When I read about horrific stories such as those of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I am convinced that the thought of domination is operative. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why a man would place his knee on another living, breathing human until he was no longer living and breathing. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why one individual would continue holding his knee on another living, breathing human as he begs for his life. When I learn that one white man holds his knee on a black man’s neck and continues doing so despite the latter repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe,” I am convinced the former has unequivocally embraced the logic of domination. In a world marked by this perverse logic, the murder of a black man is acceptable because whites are superior and any threat to their own safety-whether real or imagined-is more important than black life.
In recognizing the reality of white supremacy and the logic of domination that suffuses and energizes it, individuals who find injustice intolerable must begin to revisit whether the strategies of resistance that have been conceptualized and implemented at this point are working.
If they aren’t, we need to refocus our energies. At this point, I am seeing a wide range of social media campaigns as a strategy of resistance. I have also seen footage of a street protest. Recently, I became aware that several demonstrators gained access to a police precinct in Minneapolis and set some sections of it on fire. There are also now reports of vandalism, arson, and looting. While I do not doubt the importance and efficacy of the levels and extent of resistance seen thus far, I also see that white supremacy-manifested through police brutality-remains resilient in the face of resistance. For these reasons, I have two suggestions for the resistance movements that are unfolding strategically or organically.
First, the agitation against the state must increase. I noted that a tent has been placed outside the home of the attorney handling George Floyd’s case (Mike Freeman) and several protestors claim that they aren’t going anywhere until Freeman prosecutes and charges the officers involved. I think more space needs to be occupied so that state representatives become aware that protestors are not retreating into their private worlds while the public realm remains a sphere dominated by white supremacist ideologies and praxis.
Second, individuals across the country and world who oppose this state violence should join forces and make the resistance movement a more tight-knit process. I am aware that NYC-based Black lives Matter activists are heading to Minneapolis to protest the murder. This is the type of solidarity that we need to see in order to ensure that the authority and agency that results from mass resistance engenders a profound shift in cultural consciousness and state activity.
As always, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her intense antagonism towards all forms of social injustice-including white supremacy-grows with each passing day. Her primary goal for 2020 is to connect with other radicals for the purpose of building community and organizing against oppression.
We speak with Jeff Gibbs, director of the new film “Planet of the Humans” (produced by Michael Moore) about why green energy won’t save the world, the need to focus on consumption, and how the environmental movement has gotten off track.
Since this interview was recorded, the film was viewed more than 8 million times and a copyright claim was filed against the film for using 4 seconds of copyrighted footage. The film has been taken off YouTube, but is now on Vimeo.
Excerpt from this Episode
[ 21:15 ] Michael [Moore] and I went to a talk at, I think, the University of Michigan in Flint and the talk was [about] if you get involved with the system to change it, does the system change or do you change?
The speaker’s feeling was it’s probably going to be you who changes. So [because Bright Greens are] getting into bed with capitalism and renewable energy, that’s why I think they’re so angry about breaking down the fantasy that you can’t have renewable energy without giant industrial processes that are destructive to the planet, and you can’t have it without capitalism… without these investment schemes… without the subsidies it would be very difficult to have.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
This episode includes two tracks, “Shi-baytz” and “Radio-daylong” from the Filipino group Katribu Collective, off their new album “The Gathering.”
Katribu Collective is the unified effort a few individuals from the Philippines playing indigenous instruments from different tribes all around the world. Their vision is to promote culture and unity. Katribu’s passion and commitment to exploring the musically rich culture of the tribes of Mindanao leads its music to fuse these elements.
Right now, Deep Green Resistance organizers are at work building a political resistance resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild just, sustainable human communities.
In Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—we are building resistance and working towards revolution. We need your help.
Not all of us can work from the front lines, but we can all contribute. Our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Foundations and corporations won’t fund us because we are too radical. We operate on a shoestring budget (all our funding comes from small, grassroots donations averaging less than $50) and have only one paid staff.
Monthly donors are the backbone of our fundraising because they provide us with reliable, steady income. This allows us to plan ahead. Becoming a monthly donor, or increasing your contribution amount, is the single most important thing we can do to boost our financial base.
Current funding levels aren’t sustainable for the long-term, even with our level of operations now. We need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build stronger resistance and grow our movement.
This excerpt is from Derrick Jensen’s unpublished book “The Politics of Violation.” It is part 2 in a series. Part 1 can be found here. The piece discusses the difference between what has been called lifestyle anarchism and social anarchism.
The excerpt has been edited slightly for publication here. The book is in need of a publisher. Please contact us if you wish to speak with Derrick about this.
Just today I was talking with a friend about an economist who says that contrary to the fable commonly presented by boosters of capitalism, currency didn’t evolve to facilitate barter exchanges; members of functioning communities don’t generally barter, but rather participate in gift economies and the building of social capital. Instead, currency was created in the autocratic regimes of ancient Egypt and Sumer to facilitate taxation and debt peonage (a form of slavery).
My friend interrupted me to say, “Oh, of course. Currency exists for the same reason governments exist: to facilitate commerce, and to shift more power to the already powerful.”
So he’s an anarchist, right?
Not on your life. He can’t stand anarchists, because too many of them, he says, don’t believe in rules. “How can you have a community without standards? It’s ridiculous to think you can, and ridiculous to think that even if you could, anyone else would want to put up with your bad behavior.”
Whether his perception of anarchism is accurate isn’t the point. The point is the prevalence of this perception, and the reasons for this prevalence.
My Introduction to Anarchism
The first time I encountered anarchist literature, in my twenties, I was new to the understanding that states are inherently oppressive and set up primarily to serve the governors, and I was excited to learn more about this political theory called anarchism. I went into an anarchist bookstore, and asked for a recommendation from the black-haired, black-bearded man behind the counter. He pointed me toward a small anarchist ‘zine, which he said would be a great introduction. I bought it, took it home, and started to read.
I quickly became disgusted: the ‘zine contained all sorts of transgressive horrors. In one story the author admired someone getting a job at a mortuary so he could “cornhole” (as he put it) the dead people. I remember thinking, “The anarchist at the bookstore thought a ‘zine promoting necrophilia was a good introduction to anarchism?” I threw the ‘zine into the recycling bin. This experience was so revolting it kept me from reading any books on the history of anarchism, many of which are very good, for several years.[1]
How many other possible recruits have been driven away by these aspects of anarchism? Perhaps equally important, what sorts of people would not be driven away by these aspects? What sorts of people would find this an inviting entry to a political philosophy? Would you want to share a movement with them?
Easier Said than Done
I have a friend who has been a radical, revolutionary activist for twenty-five years. He’s not a fan of anarchism. When I told him I was writing a book about this war in anarchism between those who simply believe governments primarily serve the powerful and those who oppose any constraints on their own behavior, he urged me on.
I asked him why he disliked anarchists so much.
He said, “When I first became politically aware, in college, I became fascinated by anarchism. It was obvious, from reading Chomsky and others, that the United States is an imperial power, and that a primary purpose of the state is to provide both rationale and muscle for economic exploitation. From my reading it seemed that anarchism stands in opposition to that. So I joined an anarchist book group. That was fine for a few months, but then I wanted to do something besides argue about books. I wanted to figure out what issues were most important to me, organize campaigns around those issues, and begin the real work of social change.
“That’s when the problems began. So long as we didn’t do anything but argue about theory, the anarchists were fine. As soon as I started trying to accomplish something in the real world, the anarchists refused to help. I soon realized these anarchists were more interested in arguing than in creating social change. And sadly, with only a few absolutely wonderful exceptions, this has continued to be my experience of anarchists.”
This particular activist has been fortunate in that those anarchists merely refused to help. While I, too, know some wonderful anarchists who are reliable friends and comrades, I also know a lot of people who will no longer work with anarchists because so many anarchists have actively sabotaged their campaigns, using: malicious gossip and other disinformation; physical destruction of campaign materials; rushing the stage and stealing microphones; de-platforming, assaulting, or shouting down those who deviate from anarchist ideology and identity; and co-opting the activists’ work away from the original intent and toward the anarchists’ own ends. For many activists, attempting to organize with—or even interact with—anarchists has been a complete nightmare.
Misogyny
While at dinner with an activist friend, I asked her what’s wrong with anarchism. She said, “Misogyny. By nature I should be an anarchist. I fully recognize the oppressiveness of the state. And I want to be an anarchist. But it’s so completely saturated with misogyny that I can’t do it. It’s not even that anarchism has misogynistic tendencies. It is misogyny.”
I asked her if I could use her name in the book. She said she would prefer I not, because every time she has publicly critiqued anarchism for its misogyny, she has received routine rape and death threats.
Today I spoke with an extremely well known anarchist, who is a decent person—one of the “few absolutely wonderful exceptions” my activist friend mentioned, and certainly to my mind one of the anarchists fighting on the right side of the struggle for the direction of anarchism. He doesn’t perpetrate or promote the sorts of community-destroying behavior I describe in this book.
He told me he believes that anarchism, while flawed, is worth saving.
“I see a few problems with anarchism,” he said. “The first is that it’s a very small movement, and so while there will be nutters in any movement, in anarchism their influence on both the movement and public perception of the movement will be magnified. I’m sure there are complete nutters in the Democratic and Republican Parties, and in the Sierra Club, and for that matter among stamp collectors and chess players. But anarchism is much smaller, which makes the obnoxious outliers all that more obvious.
“The next problem is that there are some strains of anarchism—and I’m thinking of anarchoprimitivism and other extreme forms of libertarian (as opposed to communitarian) anarchism—that encourage community-destroying behavior. These strains will draw an even more disproportionate percentage of nutters, and will cultivate them, to the detriment of all, and to the detriment of anarchism as a whole.
“The third problem is that anarchism is perceived by many as a self-definition: Someone becomes an anarchist by simply deciding he or she is an anarchist. This means that among a lot of self-declared anarchists, anarchism can mean whatever they want it to mean, which means it doesn’t really mean anything at all. I don’t agree with this, and I don’t believe that a lot of people who call themselves anarchists actually are. I believe anarchism has a very specific meaning, and has a long tradition of resistance to empire, a long tradition of working for communities, and I don’t want to give up on that tradition just because a bunch of nutters are causing problems.
“But there we run into another problem with anarchism, which is that it’s an open membership, by which I mean there really isn’t a process by which we can kick people out who are harming others, and who are harming anarchism. And any anarchist who does try to get the nutters to behave is immediately labeled a fascist or worse. This is a terrible problem in anarchism, and one we need to resolve.”
Raison d’être
To work toward solving that problem is one reason I wrote this book.
[1] I’ve often wondered if the recommendation was this anarchist’s terrible idea of a joke: “Let’s freak out the newbie!” But even if it was, that leaves two questions: Why did the bookstore even carry a ‘zine promoting necrophilia, and, why did the bookstore allow this person anywhere near the public?
DGR is guided by a Code of Conduct and a Statement of Principles. We believe it is necessary for an organization to adhere to principles and codes in order to keep our movement organized.
