Unlocking The Darkness
author: Annie Nimmety
"How could it have been so cold, so enclosed, so naturally black yesterday? I scarcely remember, I am no longer part of that night, and yet can feel that I am not native to this day. Here I am in it, forever trembling with surprise. Yes, the unexpected day caught me. Fire! I belong to it. But I do not dare think it is mine yet. Never did I hope for it. That is why its coming feels so violent. It comes over me. I have burst into happiness, vertigo, and light. But I, now I want to take the fire in my hands myself, I want to caress my body myself, I want to begin to hope for and desire the day that surprised me, I want to go meet the world that has suddenly come upon me. Wait, I close my eyes. Let me go cold again, let me remember the night, let me rediscover yesterday a bit, a bit nothing, a bit of the world where I was alone, let me invent some bit of the world where I was alone, let me invent some bit of time to engage in a little hope. Let me want and want again what happened to me."
-Helene Cixous-"The Book Of Promethea"
In 2004, in Olympia, a few people materialized into a crowd, bolt cutters at their side. The fence was cut and pulled down. Beyond the fence lay a load of Strykers, ready to aid in the murdering of Iraqi's. Ready to barrel down streets, firing into houses and crowds, turning people into meat. Ready to run over children. The fence came down and then a few people ran forward, into the police. Those few people were taken down. The crowd remained where it was, standing behind an imaginary line. In 2006, in Olympia, the fence came down again. A few people ran in and were taken by the pigs. Others sat down down and went through agony while they were being arrested. The night before a fight to take down the fence lasted hours, numerous people disabled by pepper spray. Just as they did in 2004, the Strykers left Olympia for Iraq. The poor suckers stuck in them were torn to pieces. In 2007 a liberal, pacifist group began heavily pushing its agenda on those who did not wish to conform to it. When the Strykers came through Tacoma the response was minimal for the first week. People who did not want to sit idly by as the Strykers rolled through the port struggled to organize a large response on Friday night. Surrounded by hundreds of riot cops, the fence came down. Numerous people were shot with rubber bullets. The crowd left and headed towards one of the police blockades. Half the group pushed forward, on the verge of overtaking a police cruiser and pushing the line back. The other half sat down. Sang "Give Peace A Chance." And went through agony. Enveloped in tear gas, shot with rubber bullets, beaten with clubs, those following non-violent principles allowed themselves to be brutalized. Some people said we provoked the police, that our violence created violence. On Monday night no one pushed against the police. That night the police shot and gassed a completely non-violent crowd.
Some liberals try to compare their actions to those of Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond being extremely fucked up, that comparison is completely ridiculous. King was beaten and jailed, along with thousands of others in a time when you could not be somewhere if you had black skin (people with with black skin still cannot be certain places), in a time when the US government was upholding laws identical to the ones the Nazi's upheld in Germany. King made a choice to be non-violent, a choice I do not agree with. But he was risking everything and for this I and many others respect him for that. Contemporary liberals, for the most part, risk very little. They work with the police. King did not.
What does it mean to truly surrender your privileges? Could it be to actually risk surrendering your privileges? That sounds about right. And yet the liberals do not see what is going on? They are being manipulated and contained by a government which could care less about them just as long as they accomplish nothing. The second people stop working with the government they are attacked, as we have seen time and time again. What does this tell you? It should tell you that the government is doing a good job at keeping the resistance broken apart and neutralized. The slightest digression from its plan for the population is met with brutality. The slightest.
Anarchists move like fish across the map. Up here, in Cascadia, the anarchists have had a presence in nearly everything. Even if it is blacked out by the government's media. The anarchists have been everywhere for a long time now. But until recently, due to a series of blows (Anarchist Action crack down in SF, Green Scare, etc.) the anarchists have been pushed downwards. Most people do not even know the Green Scare happened.
Nothing can stop Anarchy from bubbling out of the cracks, however. Affinity groups do not touch each other unless they wish to dance. One generation, one layer, might be terrorized by the government but dozens of other groups appear from nowhere. We come from the Earth and they cannot stop us. Anarchy has survived centuries and centuries of attack. From the first Germanic tribes fighting off the Romans to the natives of Oaxaca battling against the State, Anarchy has survived. And it will always survive.
What do we do next? Being on our own can bring great rewards but also horrible fates. The rest of the population is denied access to knowledge of isolated actions. The State continues its march towards oblivion. What do we do next? We know our ideas will work. Every time we take care of each other, as we all do, all over the world, every time we get a free meal or a bed or a place or a bike, every time we do all the things we do shows us this: Anarchy works. Some may argue that we survive off capitalist overproduction. That is true. But free food abounds and open houses are always available. If something changed and we had to grow our own food we would. And we would share it. What do we do next?
Things are not mutually exclusive. We need to be doing everything all the time. Our communities are here. But what about everyone else out there? Most people do not even know of our existence, let alone what Anarchy is. Our efforts at spreading information needs to be aggressive and direct. Otherwise it will be blacked out. Likewise with what goes on in the streets. We know how effective our actions can be. That does not mean they will always be that effective. We cannot stop, no matter what.
Al Gore prattles on about climate change and someone sits in a prison cell for attacking the cause of what every one claims to want to stop. Medea Benjamin wipes the pie off her face and continues to pester a bunch of capitalist pigs who are not listening to her. The pie did get slammed in her face, though, and the anarchists ran back into their world. Tendrils have been breaking through the cracks. All over the country we can find each other and work together. Unified not by some rigid hierarchy or cellular thinking but by an idea. If we see someone acting up anywhere on the planet, we know we are working for the same thing. We may not know each other. But it says a lot that we do not have to know each other.
They control the discourse. We have ours. We just need to teach it to each other. We can beat their mind-control. All we have to do is remind each other that we are in fact here. If that happens enough, we will realize what revolution means. What it has always meant. Not something to mechanically do. Something that is immortal, something that moves like a wave back and forth across the planet, something that is happening right now, as you are reading this. A revolution is happening. A revolution can have violence. And it can have beauty. The revolution does not end nor will it ever end. Our very lifestyles are part of the revolution. There is no "after" in a revolution. We might stop fighting each other, there might be peace, but we will always be struggling upwards.
I move around a lot. But I love Cascadia. Since I have been here I have seen Anarchy spread. At first I could not tell. Would it just be a flare up or would it keep spreading? Sometimes I thought it had stopped. But every action reminded me that it had not. Now, right now, it is alive and well. I watched people change after seeing what the State really was. I watched tactics change and ideas mutate. I watched people wake up.
I remember Anarchist Action. If you don't then here is a brief summary: A group in San Francisco which was drawing massive numbers of people to actions and pushing the envelope was shut down after the 2005 G8 solidarity march (the event which led to the jailing of a certain journalist). Because of the federal involvement in the case they were pushed into the shadows. I was with them out there for the big actions and felt nothing but happiness. I felt happy that there were people who were not marching in circles on the streets. I felt happy that I could run with them, shrouded in darkness. Anarchists were heavily involved in the shut down of San Francisco that year and that energy did not die. Until the government came down on them.
We need to always fill in the gaps. Not all of us have to be connected. As long as we are always acting and not merely watching it unfold we can keep our energy alive. Decentralization is our strongest ally. They cannot wield it against us on a massive scale. Our anonymity and our trust keep us safe, above ground and active. There is risk. True. We need to ask ourselves if we want to risk those things? It is a very simple question. If the answer is no then that is your answer. If it yes, then you need to risk those things. Because many people cannot. And they would if they could.
Anarchy has no borders. The Earth has no borders. We know we are acting together. So let's act together more. Any idea, any motive and any reason are sufficient. As long as it does not stop. Time is running out. People from all over the world are attacking hierarchies, governments, fascism, greed and intolerance. We report to no one but ourselves. And still we are everywhere.
The world is not divided into eternal ideas like Peace and Violence. The world is not divided by anything but ourselves. Pacifism rejects that part of us which allows us to rise up, that part of us which chooses to fight and still not be like those we fight. Pacifism keeps people in submission. Pacifism came from Christianity, the ultimate religion of submission. We reject their Bible's pacifism just as we reject their God. Their God has no bearing on our lives. He does not exist.
In Tacoma, in 2007, people were struggling against each other more than working together. It takes the willingness of multiple parties to cooperate. We have been willing in the past and we will be willing in the future. But other people have not, time and time again. The Strykers went right through the port. There was no chance of stopping them then, but a lot of the people there were not even trying. Do we want to stop the things we say we want to stop?
Things are coming together. If I am alone in feeling this then so be it. But I feel hopeful. We need to all feel hopeful if there is something to hope for. And there is, there always is. We just need to remember how to see it. Some of us have never seen it and others have. Many of us have simply forgotten. Everything that we are doing is positive. Everything from feeding people to shutting down a city is equally vital. We do all these things. Let us do a whole lot more.
"For me darkness has always been the promise of another light."
-Helene Cixous-"The Book of Promethea"
In Loving Anarchy,
Annie Nimmety
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