Who you gonna call? One another!

Direct action tactics in trying times.

From the July/August 2009 issue of Intersections, the newsletter of Common Action

Your boss won’t pay you for hours you worked. The landlord won’t fix your backed-up toilet. Your friend was detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement, and now she’s facing deportation. Who you gonna call? You might call a lawyer, or a social worker, or you might file an appeal that may or may not receive a reply. But in an economy where these problems are becoming all too common, these solutions just aren’t cutting it anymore – they can be too slow, too expensive, and too isolating. Instead, many groups are turning towards a different solution: direct action.

“Direct action involves bringing people together to confront the person responsible for a problem, in order to demand a swift solution,” explains Emily, a member of Seattle Solidarity Network (SeaSol for short), an all-volunteer organization that supports workers and tenants. Through fliers on telephone poles and bus stops, a website on the Internet, and good old fashioned word-of-mouth, SeaSol encourages people who have a a problem with a boss or landlord to contact the group for support. Together, they write a demand letter and mobilize a crowd of people to deliver it to the boss or landlord’s house or workplace. If the boss or landlord fails to fix the problem by a stated deadline, SeaSol takes further collective action. Using these tactics, SeaSol has enjoyed a string of victories: winning relocation assistance for tenants and, back pay for workers; forcing employers to drop frivolous lawsuits; and more.

While SeaSol focuses on workplace and housing concerns, many organizations around the world have applied a similar approach to a range of issues. Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), a Canadian group widely recognized as one of the first to develop the direct action model, targets government assistance offices that illegally withhold support from people. Another Canadian group, No One is Illegal, uses similar tactics on immigration and detention issues. In British Columbia the group has occuped the offices of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and has prevented CBSA officers from carrying out deportation orders by blocking access. In one instance, more than 1,500 people were mobilized to directly prevent the deportation of a Punjabi refugee at an airport. “Direct action is not always involved in our supportwork, and many migrants have been able to win residency without recourse to it,” explains NOII member Usman Majeed. “However, when petitions, letters to politicians, press conferences, rallies, and legal avenues are all rejected by the state, we have little choice but to use our own bodies to protect and defend members of our community.”

As times get tougher, many people are beginning to question the ability of social services and the legal system to effectively put an end to injustices committed by bosses, landlords and the government. An important book called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, edited by the group INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, calls this problem “the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” The book discusses how non-profit organizations’ dependence paid staff and funding from the government or private foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation severely limits what they can accomplish. By mobilizing groups of people rather than relying solely on experts, direct action groups build something that goes beyond solving individual grievances. Direct action groups demonstrate that peoples’ issues aren’t isolated, but represent a much larger system of disempowerment.

Over time, direct action organizations can help empower a community to stand up to this system. As No One is Illegal states, “it is imperative to concretely offer support to those at the front lines of repressive immigration policies and to build our communities’ own capacity for resistance and self-organization.” Each fight is a learning experience for everyone involved, and as lessons are applied, communities win demands more and more often. At a time when we stand to lose so much, we all benefit from the empowering effect of real victory.

Free speech for some, repression for others at Western Washington University

I’m no longer a student at Western Washington University – I’m alumni, oh boy – but for some its just another Spring quarter, which brings with it another day spent avoiding the ignorant, anti-Black, anti-Semitic eyesore that is the Genocide Awareness Project (or if you please, “the GAP”). The GAP is an anti-choice amalgam of righteous Christian rage, enlarged photos of lynched Black men, concentration camps, bloody fetuses, and any and all other offensive equations that could possibly guilt a young woman into a trauma-induced stance against abortion.

I could rail on, but the argument is better left to my more articulate friend Ariel Wetzel, who has written an editorial opposing the GAP for The AS Review, a WWU student paper. Each year Western opens up Red Square for the GAP, citing free speech law. She points out that the GAP can ruin an entire day on campus, complete with police protection, protective fencing, the works, but a single person of color with leaflets – SDS member Karim Ahmath – is the one worthy of ‘disorderly conduct.’

Another extended commentary on the situation, an open letter, has been written by a friend of mine who wishes for the time being to remain anonymous. You’ll find it below. It touches on the GAP but focuses more on Karim Ahmath’s case, spelling out the racist and politically repressive implications of such an incident for WWU. It also describes in detail some of the events that have occurred since Karim’s initial arrest, further revealing the biased nature of WWU’s “free speech” practices.

Dear students of Western Washington University,

Let’s take some time to reflect on this place in which we engage in higher education. Bellingham, a nice-sized, liberally progressive, friendly town is home to the equally progressive Western Washington University: our beloved liberal arts school that prides itself on its commitment to creating a welcoming, diverse campus community.

Racial profiling, a concept that is dismissed as a fabricated, conspiracy-theory by those that have the utmost faith in our law enforcement authorities, is for many white people, like me, a phrase only associated with the New York City and Los Angeles police departments of over twenty years ago. However, allow me to recount to you some disturbing recent events.

Please read on below.

Art that fights back

For over two years now, I’ve been writing with anarchist prisoner Harold H. Thompson. He’s not just an anarchist – really though, who’s just an anarchist??-  but also a writer, a jailhouse lawyer, and a painter.

A few months back, his friend and supporter Josh put on an art auction of his work at the Dry River Collective space in Tucson, AZ. The benefits of the auction went to help pay Harold’s legal fees as he sues the Tennessee Department of Corrections for medical neglect (stemming from incidents you can read about here).

Of his paintings, here are a few of my favorites. Visit the Dry River site for more.

The last two are entitled “Bill” and “Hillary.”

May Day!

Comrade Sean Burke (Bellingham SDS) getting pumped before Tuesday’s May 1st Immigrant Rights Solidarity March, organized by Community to Community Development.

This is actually a really bad photo to illustrate an inspiring march full of over several hundred Latino immigrants and their allies, but its the only photo I managed to get before we all started moving. I spent most of the day videotaping for a documentary film I’m helping to produce (more on that someday).

For better pictures of the day, check out Not in My County (pics look like they might be down at the moment).

There’s some godawful corporate press here that reports the day to be “uneventful” because nobody tussled with the MinuteKlan knuckleheads. Also, at the height of the march, there were twice the number reported in the headline.

For reports on May 1st marches across the country, check out Indymedia’s coverage, or deleteTheBorder.org. In Los Angeles, the LAPD assaulted the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas; more on that here.

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I spent the night before the march working hard on a Chris Marker feature for Lucid Screening. I was up ridiculously late, and have this regretful “morning after” feeling about the reviews I did. I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing lately, and feel it tends to be both verbose and repetitive. For writings done in the wee hours of the morning, the Marker bits are all right, but something is telling me I need to work on my shit.

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And for those that might be wondering, Karim Ahmath‘s day in court lasted mere minutes. His lawyer requested the trial be postponed until July, and the request was approved. Meanwhile, organizing continues at Western Washington Univeristy to hold the campus police accountable.

Comrade Karim in Kangaroo Court

Friday, February 23rd, over 50 people gathered to support my friend and SDS member Karim Ahmath at his arraignment following an erroneous arrest on Thursday, February 15th. Karim was passing out anti-recruitment fliers at a Western Washington University career fair with other SDS members. While many engaged in debate with military recruiters, Karim was the only one singled out for arrest.

According to a message from my pal Ian:

They charged him with disorderly conduct, citing his argument with one of the Army recruiters as the reason for the arrest. However, I witnessed the whole thing, and although there was definitely a heated argument, I and others feel the arrest was unjust. At no time did anyone in charge of the Career Fair ask Karim or any of us passing out flyers to leave the event. At no time did Karim engage in physical contact with the recruiters or the police (except when the police put his arm behind his back, forced him out of the building, and later handcuffed him). In addition, I feel that Karim, who is Asian American, was racially profiled. Specifically, I feel he was profiled by the military recruiters, as they are the ones who requested the police remove Karim. My reasoning for this claim is that at least 5 or 6 other students were engaged in handing out the same flyers in front of the Army and Navy recruiting tables. Some of us were also engaged in verbal disagreements with the recruiters. One of us was even engaged in a shouting match with one of the Navy recruiters. But, the recruiters did not request police intervention for any of the rest of us. As you may have guessed, everyone of us, except Karim, is white.

This is only Karim’s first year in Bellingham, but his electric personality and mad organizing skillz, along with the radical energy of his SDS comrades, have endeared him to many in Bellingham – a fact testified to by the outpouring of support at his court appointment, which occured at 8:30 AM. Anything that can get college students up that early has got to be special.

Anyway, Karim plead not guilty, and his trial has been set for the 1st of May. May Day, can you believe it?!

Free Leonard Peltier

I owe a great deal to Leonard Peltier. At the formative age of 15, it was learning about his imprisonment that really sparked my questioning of Amerian society and all its injustices, thoughout history up into the present day. I remember bringing a petition to my junior high and gathering a few paltry signatues. The petition didn’t go anywhere – I can’t even remember what I did with it – but Peltier’s struggle has continued to inspire me to fight for a better world.

 

 

Eight years later, he’s still not free. Now in his 31st year of imprisonment, he still serves – in Ward Churchill’s words – “as a symbol of the arbitrary ability of the federal government of the United States to repress the legitimate aspirations to liberation of indigenous peoples within its claimed boundaries.” Peltier never chose to be that symbol, but he’s carried it with amazing diginity and resolve.

 

On February 10th, people gathered in Tacoma, WA for the Annual Northwest Leonard Peltier March and Rally, now in its 14th year. I made it to the march the past two years, but I was regrettably short-sighted this year and failed to get off work. Photos of this year’s rally can be found here and here.

 

What follows below is a report on the march by Arthur Miller, sent around by e-mail and posted on Seattle Indymedia. An inspiring figure himself, Miller’s a long-time anarchist who has worked in solidarity with Native struggles for most of his lifetime, and has played a key role in organizing the Northwest Freedom for Peltier marches throughout their history.

 

Miller’s report touches on several key issues, particularly the shameful absence of the white left at the march, their ignorance of Peltier’s case and of Native issues in general. He also reports of police harassment of Native people, something that liberal peace activists never seem to have to contend with…