International Call-Out for Oakland Support and Solidarity

Greetings from California, Comrades!

As many have heard, a relentless anti-police movement has grown from the tragedy of Oscar Grant's murder on January 1, 2009 by former officer Johannes Mehserle.* Recently, Mehserle was convicted of the deplorable charge of involuntary manslaughter, a weak charge which carries a sentence of probation to four years in prison.


When the news of Mehserle's verdict reached the people of the bay area on July 8, the streets heated up in a style reminiscent of the anti-police riots a year and a half ago. Downtown Oakland swelled immediately after the release of the verdict. For hours after the verdict was released, people milled about, yelling at police, and listening to angry speeches. As the sun went down, the police moved in to end the spontaneous demonstration, threatening arrest of anyone who stayed on the streets. The sky was littered with helicopters and planes. Every police force in the region had gathered in downtown. Despite these threats, in the hours that followed, blocks and blocks of Oakland were wrecked, bank windows smashed, stores looted, and trash cans set on fire by people outraged by the state and society's sickening disregard for Oscar Grant's life, and by extension, those who are always the victims of police violence in the state's constant war against people of color, women, and the poor.
The night of July 8th, and long after the riots had ended, the Oakland Police Department as well as other Bay Area police departments, snatched at least 78 people from the streets.

Eleven of those comrades are still in jail. Seven of them are being held without bail for parole violations. The five others face various felonies including burglary, rioting, and arson. They have bails ranging between $60,000 and $70,000, with one man being held for $525,000. With a bail bondsman we can free them by posting around 10% of the bail. We are hopeful that some of these people will get their bail reduced in the coming weeks after their pre-trial. Regardless, raising funds now is imperative. Defendants will be held in jail until the conclusion of their trial if we do not bail them out. (During the last Oscar Grant riots in January 2009 one man was charged with arson. His trial dragged on a whole year before the city dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. This scenario is destined to repeat itself at the expense of those arrested on the 8th.)


We, the anarchists of the Bay Area of California, lovers of rebellions, and haters of cops for their ceaseless violence against us, do humbly request for solidarity to help free these brave rebels. If your collective, scene, squat or movement has the capacity to throw a benefit, or otherwise come into money, for this legal defense fund we need it in order to keep our movement against the murderous police fierce and alive!




Thank you.


In Solidarity,


The Oakland 100 Support Committee


To make an online contribution use oakland100 [at] gmail.com via paypal.com

For more information on the status of the cases see http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com/ or email us at oakland100 [at] gmail.com

For ongoing coverage of the Justice for Oscar Grant Movement see http://www.indybay.org


Please feel free to repost and forward this widely and translate into other languages!


*For those unfamiliar with the case: Oscar Grant, a Black man, was pulled off a train in Oakland New Years Eve by a gang of police. He was laying face down on the ground when shot point blank in the back by Mehserle, a white cop. The murder was filmed by many train passengers and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on youtube. A week after the murder Oakland, California erupted in riots.

http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com/

Nothing Burns in Hell: On Delinquents and Respectable Citizens by (U.K. situationist) Wayne Spencer

Nothing Burns in Hell: On Delinquents and Respectable Citizens by (U.K. situationist) Wayne Spencer

Introduction: This article by a British situationist offers a critique of capitalism's many delinquents and the respectable citizens who confront them in the streets and the dominant society's spectacle of social life. Covering both street-corner hoodlums and the industrious armed gangs who distribute drugs in some cities, the author argues that the delinquents have failed to challenge capitalism's alienated social relations; indeed, they have fallen prey to the spectacle's fake models of youth rebellion. He suggests to the respectable that if their lives are easily disrupted by the nuisances that delinquents cause, this is in part because their desperate efforts to persuade themselves that they are contented and fulfilled are so very fragile. In the end, he says that delinquency is a pathological product of the absence of rebellion, and the only remedy for it is a new concrete project of revolt in which both those currently lost in delinquency and respectability can participate.

In the bottom, sorrow dwells, in the heights anguish

1.

A society as disastrous as the one in which we unfortunately live can hardly avoid talking about its shortcomings. But social problems are only taken up by the institutions and media of this deceptive society in falsified form. All that we see are misrepresented failings and spurious remedies. The prevailing babble about youthful ‘anti-social behaviour’ is no exception. We are typically given to understand that delinquents are rejecting the norms of society, and respectable citizens are being impoverished by a loss of the tranquil enjoyment of ordinary life. This way of viewing matters is perfectly misconceived. The problem is not that young delinquents have gone too far in their defiance of the dominant society, but that they have not gone far enough. The problem is not that the lives of the respectable citizens of this society have become disturbed, but that they have remained frozen. Delinquency does not so much cause the poverty of everyday life as continue it in different guises.

2.

I shall not offer exhaustive definitions of what I call the "delinquent" and the "respectable citizen". Who cares for such tedious exercises in procrustean classification other than the spent souls of academia? Suffice it to say that my delinquents include, amongst others, (a) bored kids who try to draw a line between themselves and the shitty world around them with music, dress, and the frugal use of cool talk; (b) the loose, local groups of friends and acquaintances who come together from time to time to sneer at passers-by and indulge in unlawful kicks and perhaps a little criminal enterprise; (c) other minor street criminals who ply their trade in order to pay for their partying; and (d) the more consistently crimiminal associations sometimes referred to as "gangs". But not everything I say applies to each kind of delinquent equally. As for my respectable citizens, well, I'm sure we all know one when we see one. At bottom, what is important, at least to me, is that you consider whether you recognise some part of your own everyday life in what I have to say. If you do, I am afraid that it is up to you to determine what practical consequences follow from this. One step toward refusing the dominant society consists in breaking the habit of expecting one's thought and practice to be handed down to you.

3.

It is often lamented that delinquent youths lack respect for figures of authority. But it should come as no surprise that teachers, the police, parents, etc, do not attract respect, for the very simple reason that these contemptible roles do not deserve it. Why on earth should we treat with deferential regard those who would reduce us to the shrunken lives this society permits? The very notion of deference is merely a demand that we quietly and blindly submit to the external authorities who have placed themselves above us. It is loathsome. The delinquents are to be congratulated for taking steps towards a practical recognition of this. Unfortunately, while they reject some of what the society offers up for respect, they defer to other elements of the alienated life we are asked to lead. What is worse, they have come to admire and desire the very alienations they have failed to contest. For as long as this persists, they will remain stultified.

4.

To dependent youth, the unemployed, the working poor in shit jobs, and the residents of ghettos, it is all too obvious that boredom, subordination and contempt are no small part of their lot. There are several different ways of responding to this insight. One is to grin and bear it in the hope that conformity will eventually be rewarded by higher status and better-paid work. This is perhaps the most common response. Another is to contest the society that produces so much dead time. A third is to pursue alternative sources of prestige and money within this very society. For all too many, delinquency is in essence a search for such illusory alternatives.

Continued at: http://zinelibrary.info/files/Nothing%20Burns%20in%20Hell.pdf

Toronto G20: Eyewitness Report by Crimethinc

In the last update offered by Crimethinc an overview of what happened in Toronto during the anarchist actions against the G20 June 25-27. We’ve received the following blow-by-blow report from on the ground there, offering context and analysis from inside the riots that shook Canada’s largest city. Anarchists have fully emerged in North America as a force to be reckoned with following the events in Toronto, and it is important to understand how this came about. The black bloc has become a household name throughout the region, and we must use this exposure to our advantage by maintaining our visibility even in the face of repression. We must also look critically at the events of the weekend in order to make strategic advances toward our goal of completely dismantling the domination and hierarchy of the present world. Lead-up The June G20 meeting was announced for Toronto in December of 2009. While anarchists were already preparing for the G8 in Huntsville, the announcement that a major summit would be held in the downtown core of Canada’s largest city created a stir among anarchists, and generated significant momentum for counter-summit actions to take place in Toronto. To our knowledge, anarchists participated in three basic models of organizing against the G20. We will briefly outline these to offer context to those seeking to understand the successes and failures of the Toronto protests.

Some anarchists were involved in the Toronto Community Mobilization Network (TCMN), which was not an anarchist group and did not organize actions but sought only to provide infrastructure and coordination for the convergence in Toronto. Many anarchists, especially those based in Toronto, chose to put their efforts into this group rather than organize along explicitly anarchist lines. Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR) was born of the desire for an explicitly anarchist group to organize an action framework against the summit, creating a semi-public format that many anarchists and allies could plug into. They issued calls to action fairly early on and while they saw fierce divisions over tactics and strategy in the immediate lead-up to the G20, they maintained the public call for three explicitly anarchist actions during the weekend. Other anarchists organized informally through established networks of friends sharing affinity and agreements on tactics, and they made a public call for a demonstration against prisons on Sunday June 26, the last day of the G20 summit. Also significant is that many different groups in Montreal organized massive support for the convergence against the G20; this included a reforming of CLAC, which had originally existed to oppose the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001.

There were other groups organizing against the G20, with which anarchists interacted in various ways. No One Is Illegal, a cross-Canada network working to end deportations and regularize non-status migrants, held a march and participated in much of the street action. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) also organized for the summit, focusing on a march it called for Friday. The Canadian Labour Congress, a mainstream union coalition, organized the largest permitted march on Saturday. Various other protests occurred in the week leading up to the summit, including a queer action on Tuesday, a day of protest for climate justice on Wednesday, and a march in solidarity with Indigenous sovereignty on Thursday.

This is only a general overview of the different approaches anarchists took in Toronto, but perhaps it will help others understand how the Toronto actions compare to other convergences against global capitalism.

read all report here:

http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/toronto2.php

Manual for Revolutionary Leaders  by Fredy Perlman

I. Generation of Revolutionaries

Plunder and war continue to spread across the world. They are stuff of past and present history. The greater the material product of society the greater the plunder; the larger the stock of productive forces the more extensive the destruction.

It is not the task of this manual to examine the plunder or the destruction, but to treat contemporary forms of resisting them. Among forms of resistance only two will be examined: a form which has become established as the modern model of revolution, and resistance which takes the form of a continually changing response to continually developing productive forces.

It is the task of the manual to apply the twentieth century model of revolution to the conditions created by the development of productive forces. By its successes this model has proved itself the quintessence of revolutionary political activity in modern times. Its processes have so far been limited to conditions characterized by a low level of development of productive forces. At a high level of development of productive forces, responses to the dominant social order take the form of attempts of individuals to realize their self-powers, their capacities, to the level made possible by social development. Social relations that have played out their historical role come into conflict with the possibilities opened up by the productive forces. Suddenly people who have come on the scene, who have become disenchanted with the entire system, who have become disillusioned over the system and who are ready now and willing to do something about it. The possibilities of the productive forces cease to be the subject of prayer, the promised land to which a savior will someday lead mankind.

The attempt of individuals to realize their self-powers to the level made possible by contemporary productive forces is a threat to the stability of the dominant social order, which tries to purge itself of rebellious elements. However, in spite of the repressive character of the social context in which they appear, at a high level of development productive forces, rebellious responses to the social order do not avail themselves of the modern model of revolution. The attempt of individuals to live at the contemporary level of development of the productive forces does not give rise to activities consistent with the quintessence of revolutionary political practice, namely to revolutionary organizational ideology, leadership and the struggle for State power. On the contrary, distinct moves in the opposite direction can be observed.

Although the aim of the manual is to apply the modern model revolution to conditions of highly developed productive forces, a brief overview of responses which move outside the boundaries of this model will be given because these responses are themselves the field out of which leaders emerge, and because the field itself becomes a raw material which leaders attempt to shape and transform.......

read all this wondefull text here:

  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manual_for_Revolutionary_Leaders

read about Fredy Perlman here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredy_Perlman