AMERICAN POLITICS:

OBAMA BE DAMNED:

BREAKING THE CHAINS OF ILLUSION.

POLITICS/HUMOUR:

WHERE THE BALLOT "COUNTS"

ANARCHIST THEORY:

TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE THAT IS THE QUESTION:

Elections in the USA (and the City of Winnipeg) come at an interesting time of
year. Near enough to Halloween to compete in scariness, and near enough to Christmas to remind one that an actual gift is more than a promise. While it hasn't been an invariable tenet of anarchist thought to refuse participation in all elections (whatever some anarchists may think) it is a fact that anarchists have always been critical of the electoral process. Here's one thought provoking example from the Bureau of Public Secrets.

@@@@@@@@@@
THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS
http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/beyond-voting.htm
Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":
(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would
progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates' stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues -- apart from the feeble threat of changing one's vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies.

Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in "democratic" regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don't even know who they are. . . . In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities.

A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.)

If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil. Even in the rare case when a "radical" politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely.

Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful,he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few "progressive" measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, "It's painful to submit to our bosses; it's even more stupid to choose them!"

--Excerpts from Ken Knabb's "The Joy of Revolution."
The complete text is online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev.htm
* * *
SOME CLARIFICATIONS
My intention in circulating these observations is not to discourage you from voting or campaigning, but to encourage you to go further. Two years ago, I wrote: "Like many other people, I am delighted to see the Republicans collapsing into well-deserved ignominy, with the likelihood of the Democrats recapturing the presidency and increasing their majorities in Congress. Hopefully the latter will discontinue or at least mitigate some of the more insane policies of the current administration (some of which, such as climate change and ecological devastation, threaten to become irreversible).

Beyond that, I do not expect the Democratic politicians to accomplish anything very significant. Most of them are just as corrupt and compromised as the Republicans. Even if a few of them are honest and well-intentioned,they are all loyal servants of the ruling economic system, and they all ultimately function as cogwheels in the murderous political machine that serves to defend that system."

I don't think I need to take back any of my words. The Democrats did indeed recapture the presidency and increase their majorities in Congress, but their accomplishments since then have been as pathetic as could be imagined. Some people will say that they are still better than the Republicans. But being better than a party of sociopathic demagogues and gullible ignoramuses is hardly much of an achievement. And being so lame that you risk getting defeated by such a party is an achievement of a wholly different order.

During the last two years we have seen the consequences of relying on political representatives to act for us. If the antiwar movement and other more or less progressive currents had put even a fraction of the immense amount of time and energy they invested in election campaigns into more directly radical agitation, the situation would be very different today. As a side effect, such agitation would actually have resulted in more liberals being elected. But more importantly, it would have shifted the momentum and the terrain of the struggle. The liberal politicians would have been under pressure to actually implement some significant changes (such as ending the wars and inaugurating free universal health care), which would have invigorated their base while putting the reactionary forces increasingly on the defensive.

And that momentum shift might well have inspired even more radical actions and aspirations -- not just protesting against this or that particular outrage, but calling into question the whole absurd and anachronistic social system. The side that takes the initiative usually wins because it defines the terms of the struggle. If we accept the system's own terms and confine ourselves to defensively reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it.

We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones until we put an end to it. By all means vote if you feel like it. But don't stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.
BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701, USA
http://www.bopsecrets.org/

HUMOUR:

VOTING:

BLOGGING:

IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN...

VOTE FOR MOLLY:

Yes, it's that time of the year again, and Molly is out on the hustings, kissing hands and shaking babies (or is it the other way around?). Yes, we're talking about the annual Canadian Blog Awards, and Molly is once more nominated and in the running for 'Best Political Blog'. Last year Molly made it into the five finalists, but I placed 5th out of 5. This year I intend to hit the podium. Better than the Olympics ! Better than the Grey Cup ! Watch Molly run. Help cheer her on. Here's how...

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

If you like what we're doing here why not 'Vote for Molly'. It's simple.

A)Go to the canadian Blog Awards Site ( http://cdnba.wordpress.com ).

B)Click on the 'Vote 2009' heading in the masthead.

C)Go down the list and click 'Political'.

D)Search out 'Molly's Blog' amongst the list and give it your number 1 vote. Check out the other blogs on the list to see if you'd like to name a second,third, fourth, etc. choice.

It's that simple. It's that easy. Do it now and get a customized 'Molly Hug'.

♥!♥!♥!♥!♥!♥!♥!

BLOGGING:

MOLLY MAKES IT TO ROUND TWO:

I followed a link today to somebody who visited this blog and found out something astounding. Molly's Blog has made it to round two in the voting for the Canadian Blog Awards "best political blog". To be honest I never thought I would get there, but I guess that some people like what I do. The other contestants in round 2 include the Calgary Grit (affiliation obvious), the Small Dead Animals (conservative), and two others that I cannot determine any affiliation for: Nunc Scio and Bond Papers. The latter is from a public relations and public policy guy in Newfoundland and Nunc Scio is quite non-partisan. If I wasn't in the running I'd vote for Nunc Scio. As to those who weren't nominated but should have been my vote would have been for Eugene Plawiuk's La Revue Gauche blog, an effort that I actually consider better than my own. Oh horrors- voting against myself !

In any case round two is nhow on, and you can vote once a week. Help a poor little meowing pussycat out and vote for me at the Canadian Blog Awards.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

BEYOND VOTING:

The American election is almost upon us, and those of us in the rest of the world wait to see who will be the new Emperor. Molly has decided to reprint the following intelligent commentary from the Bureau of Public Secrets that came to me in an email today. It pretty well sums up my own view.

The graphic on the left, by the way, is also a good visual summary. I first saw it on the Québec City Voix de Faits blog, and it is originally by the Brazilian artist Latuff and was published on his Tales of the Iraq War site. Here's to the extra thousand words that the picture sums up.

.........................

Beyond Voting‏:
From:
Bureau of Public Secrets (knabb@bopsecrets.org )
THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS

http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/beyond-voting.htm

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of "government":

(1) Unrestricted freedom

(2) Direct democracy

(3) Delegate democracy

(4) Representative democracy

(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates' stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues -- apart from the feeble threat of changing one's vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public(sometimes more so-Molly) regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in "democratic" regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don't even know who they are. . . .

In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.) If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil.

Even in the rare case when a "radical" politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few"progressive" measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come.

As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, "It's painful to submit to our bosses; it's even more stupid to choose them!"

--Excerpts from Ken Knabb's "The Joy of Revolution."

The complete text is online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev.htm

* * *

SOME CLARIFICATIONS

My intention in circulating these observations is not to discourage you from voting or campaigning, but to encourage you to go further.

Like many other people, I am delighted to see the Republicans collapsing into well-deserved ignominy, with the likelihood of the Democrats recapturing the presidency and increasing their majorities in Congress.Hopefully the latter will discontinue or at least mitigate some of the more insane policies of the current administration (some of which, such as climate change and ecological devastation, threaten to become irreversible).

Beyond that, I do not expect the Democratic politicians to accomplish anything very significant. Most of them are just as corrupt and compromised as the Republicans. Even if a few of them are honest and well-intentioned,they are all loyal servants of the ruling economic system, and they all ultimately function as cogwheels in the murderous political machine that serves to defend that system.

I have considerable respect and sympathy for the people who are campaigning for the Democratic Party while simultaneously trying to reinvigorate it and democratize it. There are elements of a real grassroots movement there, developing in tandem with the remarkable growth of the liberal-radical blogosphere over the last few years.

But imagine if that same immense amount of energy on the part of millions of people was put into more directly radical agitation, rather than (or in addition to) campaigning for rival millionaires. As a side effect, such agitation would put the reactionaries on the defensive and actually result in more "progressives" being elected. But more importantly, it would shift both the momentum and the terrain of the struggle.

If you put all your energy into trying to reassure swing voters that your candidate is "fully committed to fighting the War on Terror" but that he has regretfully concluded that we should withdraw from Iraq because "our efforts to promote democracy" there haven't been working, you may win a few votes but you have accomplished nothing in the way of political awareness.

In contrast, if you convince people that the war in Iraq is both evil and stupid, they will not only tend to vote for antiwar candidates, they are likely to start questioning other aspects of the social system. Which may lead to them to challenge that system in more concrete and participatory ways.

(If you want some examples, look at the rich variety of tactics used in France two years ago -- http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/france2006.htm .)

The side that takes the initiative usually wins because it defines the terms of the struggle. If we accept the system's own terms and confine ourselves to defensively reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it. We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones until we put an end to it.

By all means vote if you feel like it. But don't stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.

BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS

P.O. Box 1044,

Berkeley CA

94701,

USA

http://www.bopsecrets.org

CANADIAN POLITICS:

STRATEGIC VOTING:

Being as she is an anarchist Molly does not advocate voting in any elections. All that being said the worst possible outcome of the coming Canadian elections would be a majority Conservative government, for many and sundry reasons. A minority government, of any stripe, would be preferable. Minority governments do the least harm, and have to take many more interests into account than majority ones do.

In the upcoming Canadian elections there will undoubtedly be the usual vote split, with about 1/3rd of those who vote electing the government. Given the usual level of abstention this will mean that the so-called "mandate" of any future government will represent the temporary wishes of about 1/4 of the population. Other countries have put in place various methods of "proportional representation" which is much more democratic than our Canadian system.

Because of the immense potential of the present governing party, the party of Sneaky Stevie, to do great harm in these perilous economic times, in pursuit of ideological goals, a movement for 'Strategic Voting' has arisen, a movement of "vote swapping" if you will. The following article from the online Canadian news magazine 'The Tyee'

...........................

Strategic Voting 2.0
Easier now to make informed decision. :
How the web has changed our ability to target, and swap, votes.
Times have changed for voters, especially those on the fragmented progressive side of the Canadian political spectrum.

The electoral experts like to point out that "strategic voting" never worked. Historically, it meant depriving your favourite party of a vote, and instead simply voting for the non-Conservative party that was highest ranked nationally.

For decades, at the federal level, that meant voting Liberal. The federal Liberals knew this, and it allowed them to steer further to the right than they otherwise could have.

This version of "strategic voting" wasn't very strategic at all -- hence the quotation marks. It was a mug's game, and most progressives rightly rejected it.
Enter the Internet
Two key developments have changed this, and now truly strategic voting (no quotation marks) is possible. And a large number of Canadians have begun to do it.

One of those key developments is a vastly increased ability to find and communicate with people of shared interests -- via the Internet.

I won't go into the various means -- chat rooms, social networking sites, etc. Suffice it to say, these means are also available to voters. And voters who share an interest in defeating Stephen Harper can now find and communicate with one another.

The other key development is the capacity to broadcast information cheaply and instantaneously, again via the Internet. Formerly the preserve of the media establishment, broadcast communication is now available to anyone, even those who oppose the establishment.

This capacity is now being combined with widely available public opinion polls, which are being carried out with increasing frequency. This is allowing voters in every riding to access the best possible information about which local candidate is most likely to defeat the local Conservative.

Social networking and cheap information broadcasting have changed strategic voting forever. It is no longer a mug's game.
Picking a winner
In the current election, the information broadcasting website voteforenvironment received over a million hits in just two weeks of existence. This website provides a crucial piece of information for strategic voters -- voter intention analysis on a riding-by-riding basis.

In other words, voters can see which candidate in their riding is most likely to beat the Conservative candidate. So, instead of automatically voting Liberal just because they are the second best party nationally, they can actually pick a progressive winner in their riding.

This doesn't automatically result in Liberals taking seats away from other progressive parties, as was the case in the bad old days. As the website shows, this strategy would actually result in increases in seat counts for all of the opposition parties.

The site is updated often with new polling information, and shows that the Conservatives could lose a number of key seats in this election through strategic voting. In theory, if enough people did it, the Conservatives could actually lose the election altogether.
Supporting your favourite
A concern remains, however. People with strong party loyalty don't want their party to lose a vote.

Now, those people can find like-minded partisans of other parties across Canada and swap votes with them. This is where the social networking sites come into play. Here's how it works.

S uppose you're an NDP supporter in a riding where the Liberal candidate is a close second to the Conservative. And a Liberal supporter lives in a riding where the NDP candidate is most likely to unseat a Tory.

You meet on a vote-swap website, and agree to hold your respective noses. You each vote for the local candidate that could beat the Conservative.

You have voted strategically in your riding, and your favourite party hasn't lost a vote. In fact, it gets a vote where it actually counts -- where it could result in a victory. Ditto for your counterpart.

The huge social networking site, Facebook, has an Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada group. It's accessible here, here, and here (links available only if you're registered with Facebook). You can also vote strategically without having to join Facebook, at http//www.votepair.ca. This site is not specifically anti-Harper, but it does the trick.
Intelligent vote-swapping
Despite the evolution of the Internet, there are still some old-school "experts" who haven't yet adjusted to the new reality. They argue that strategic voting hurts your favourite party, and won't work against the Conservatives.

They are wrong on both points. Intelligent vote-swapping gives votes to your favourite party where those votes count, and would reduce the Conservatives seat count.

In fact, it could swing the next election if Stephen Harper is still the Conservative leader. With more than just a few weeks to organize, vote-swapping could well result in a Conservative rout.

Of course, strategic voting is only necessary because Canada still suffers under the first-past-the-post system. Few countries still have this system; the vast majority have opted for the more democratic system of proportional representation. And no doubt this will be the next evolution in strategic voting.

But in the meantime, Canadian progressives are adopting a do-it-yourself form of proportional representation. They are already moving toward strategic voting.

As with many social innovations, they're doing it because they can. And despite what the "experts" say.
................................

As she has said before, Molly is not voting in this election, as she has not voted for decades. I am, however, doubtful that any anarchist "Don't Vote" campaign could have any real effect at the present time because of the small size of the Canadian anarchist movement. Still.. not voting is a visible sign of what anarchism is. Anarchists have to make it plain that they are not just one more contender for power, that the very essence of anarchism means that they are something different from "politicians". In light of this here is Molly's public service list of websites that either advocate strategic voting or give information on it. Use it as you will.

...................................

1)This Timeless Moment

2)Vote for Environment

3)Facebook Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada

4)Vote Pair

5)Fair Vote Canada

6)Runesmiths Canadian Content

7)Avaaz

8)Anyone But Harper

9)Department of Culture

10)Democratic Space

11)Vote for Climate

.................................

Once more, Molly advocates that anarchists don't vote except in the most extreme situations because we have to make it plain that we are not contenders for power. For the average Joe, however, the situation is quite different. Elections Canada had a "hairy fit" about the growth of these strategic voting sites, but they backed off from trying to outlaw them. It would have made the absurdity of electing a new set of dictators every few years, with the campaigns unwillingly financed out of the public purse too obvious. Fear can produce wonderful results. Not that the powers that be aren't very willing to try and restrict "democracy" to their own narrow definition, but in this case they had to back off. Look at the above sites and see if you like what they advocate. Realize that the anarchist definition of democracy means a lot more- direct democracy- than what is advocated on these sites or even proportional representation.

MOUVEMENT ANARCHISTE DU CANADA/CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT- SAGUENAY:

AFFICHES ANTI-ÉLECTORALES/ANTI-ELECTORAL POSTERS:

Élections du Canada un autre point de vue. /CANADIAN ELECTIONS, ANOTHER VIEW:

Les camarades de la NEFAC-Saguenay ont produit une affiche appelant à l'abstention lors de la prochaine élection canadienne. L'avis de la Voix de Faits blog au Québec est reproduit ci-dessous.

Molly ne sait pas à la sagesse de cette. Comme je l'ai dit avant sur ce blog, je pense que ce n'est pas le bon moment pour un "Ne votez pas" campaign. Notre occasions d'influencer les « partis gauche >> sont exactement zéro étant donné la manière dont le mouvement anarchiste est.

L'utilité d'une telle campagne repose donc sur la réussite de il peut être à convaincre les «non-politiques>> de le cas anarchiste pour "action directe" en dehors du processus politique. Abstention, par elle-même, ne fait rien. Molly est d'avis que cette campagne serait inutile dans le Canada anglais en ce moment, mais la situation peut être très différents au Québec.

De toute façon ...

The comrades of the NEFAC-Saguenay have produced a poster calling for abstention in the upcoming Canadian elections. The notice from the Voix de Faits blog in Québec is reproduced below.

Molly doesn`t know abouit the wisdom of this. As I have expressed before on this blog I don`t think that this is the proper time for a `Don`t Vote`campaign. Our chances of influencing the `left parties`are exactly zero given how small the anarchist movement is.

The utility of such a campaign depends upon how successful it may be in convincing the 'non-political' of the anarchist case for "direct action" outside of the political process. Abstention, by itself, does nothing. Molly is of the opinion that such a campaign would be useless in English Canada at this time, but the situation may be quite different in Québec.

Anyways.....

.........................

Affiches anti-électorales
La NEFAC et le CRAC-Saguenay viennent de sortir des affiches abstentionnistes pour la campagne électorale fédérale.
Noir et blanc format paysage
Rouge et noir format paysage
Noir et blanc format portrait
Rouge et noir format portrait

L'image ci-dessus est un exemple de ce affiche. /The image above is an example of this poster.

ANARCHIST THEORY:

HOPE IN A TIME OF ELECTIONS:

In obvious imitation of the novel 'Love in a Time of Cholera' the following essay, written by Cindy Milstein, attempts to address the perennial question of "what is to be done" in light of the upcoming US elections. As a Canadian, Molly looks on this sort of debate very much as an outsider. There is little doubt that Comrade Milstein's intentions are laudable, being as she is trying (perhaps desperately ?) to raise questions about tactics and general orientation that have been pretty well ignored by the US anarchist movement- and the US left in general. Still, her essay, valuable as it is, may stand as a shining example of just how "hopeless" the American left, mired as it is in identity politics and snobbery, is. Even this intelligent statement of a tactical program partakes of this cultural milieu that is 100% guaranteed to divide an opposition rather than unite it. One searches in vain through the essay, for instance, to find a mention of "class", the one thing that could unite America's fractious gaggle of a struggle for advantage masquerading as a left. The author makes the standard genuflection to the "third world", in the "person" of the Argentinian movement (now very much reduced, by the way) and the Zapatistas, a truly American thing to do. Perhaps she is conscious of the fundamental dilemma of the American left that she belongs to. This "left" is just large enough to sustain itself as a self-referential cult in the homeland of the cult. BUT the very actions that sustain its coherence guarantee !!! that it can never expand beyond its present horizons to embrace even a large minority of ordinary people in the USA. Ordinary people are repulsed by such things as "self-education" about identity politics. They see such things as the cultishness and manipulation that they , in fact, are.

So here we are. Personally I don't think that the American left, and its anarchist component, can be reformed by well intentioned calls from within. Not that there aren't good and intelligent people within the American anarchist milieu, but they are outnumbered and swamped by others who are less laudable. I hope that I am wrong in this estimate. I am less pessimistic about the left in other countries, including my own, no matter how much the Empire attempts to export its own form of "opposition", like any other industrial waste. If the American left is to reform and grow the impetus will have to come from without. It may come from another country, from a movement such as that in Argentina that is not defeated and absorbed like the Argentinian one has been. It may come from within the USA itself, with the rise of a new populist movement that the left will have to scurry to keep up with as it sheds its tired preoccupations. Both possibilities are unlikely, though not impossible. If such a thing does happen none of the present proponents of identity politics and division will ever admit the errors that they propagate today. They will merely forget them and pretend they never advocated what they do today. That is the nature of politics and human psychology.

But anyways, the essay. Judge it as you will. It's valuable despite all of Molly' quibbles......

..............................

Hope in a Time of Elections:

Movement Building at the Summer Conventions

Cindy Milstein
(Note: This essay is reprinted from the July–August 2008 issue of Left Turn magazine, which features a special section on the elections; it was written shortly before Obama secured the nomination.)

“The world as it is, is not the world as it has to be.”(1) Long our basic aspiration, this ideal now springs from a U.S. presidential contender. And yet the gap between the change that Barack Obama promises and the transformation that we know is crucial may offer a space of possibility. For even as liberals are utilizing “hope” to captivate millions this election, embodied in Obama’s “New Politics,”(2) I would maintain that those of us who seek a nonhierarchical world are still the real carriers of utopia. Nevertheless, this election supplies us the opening to reject statism in a way that’s sensitive to the historical moment and prefigurative of a directly democratic society—but only if we mind the gap.

As libertarian leftists, we view presidential contests as egregious reaffirmations of the state, and thus challenge electoralism’s connection to statecraft but also hierarchy. Yet often the best we can muster is an anti-politics, where our organizing goes into decrying those institutions and social relations we oppose. We seem to forget that presidential campaigns are one of few times when there’s widespread interest in politics; a public, political culture in this privatized, depoliticized country; and occasionally, such as now, tremendous involvement. Also, uniquely, there will be a female or black Democratic nominee for president. Engaging in a thoughtful, imaginative way with this election could allow us to hold out a reconstructive vision for those thousands who will be disappointed by the new administration, and so potentially looking for alternatives. And we just might learn something about ourselves.

Lessons Learned

Nearly as early as the candidates, anarchists were crafting their own campaigns, aimed specifically at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions (RNC and DNC). Much good work has gone into these plans; still, it’s helpful to briefly recall several examples during the 2000 and 2004 convention protests, in an effort to build on our achievements and limit similar missteps in 2008.

Back in 2000, the conventions followed on the heels of the emergent North American branch of the global anti-capitalist movement, which for its part gave visibility to both anarchism and a horizontalist zeitgeist. This sense of potentiality carried through into the DNC and RNC, translating into lived experiments with self-organization. From convergence centers and Indymedia, to skills trainings and affinity groups, the stress was on direct democracy. We created our own (albeit temporary) counterinstitutions for collective decision-making—a precondition for any egalitarian, nonstate-based society. But the “we” was limited. To cite one example, radicals guarded spokescouncil meeting doors during the RNC to determine who could and couldn’t enter (based on who looked the part?). In turning people away, we disenfranchised those who also wanted to practice face-to-face politics, thereby undercutting our aim: power by all the people. Another case during the 2000 RNC was the March for Economic Human Rights, in which some 15,000 people, pledged to nonviolence, walked single file, flanked by “March Security Teams.” Many anti-capitalists either ignored the poor people’s march or all but taunted its supposed passivity and reformism. Militancy trumped solidarity, even as the police threatened the many at-risk marchers, from single parents and people of color, to children and people with disabilities.

The 2004 conventions also saw some intriguing new experiments. First, there was the DNC-to-RNC bike ride, where anti-authoritarians pedaled between the conventions to explicitly relate the two, stopping in small towns along the way to highlight, in contrast, community self-management. This culminated in the cyclists entering New York City for a march for direct democracy, conversing with passersby about a nonelectoral politics. Then there was the “Don’t Just (Not) Vote” campaign, devised from a National Conference on Organized Resistance panel to encourage the idea that politics should be the collective self-organization that’s done 364 days, 23 hours, and 55 minutes of the year—versus the 5 minutes of voting (or not) on Election Day. At its best, this campaign spurred literature on self-governance and shifted our own stance to a proactive one, reflected in the sentiment borrowed from the Argentine assembly movement: “Our dreams will never fit in their ballot boxes.” These and other efforts, despite trying to reach a wider range of people, remained fairly insular, thereby signaling a turn to a politics of (our) everyday life—necessary but not sufficient without larger self-instituted decision-making bodies as eventual replacements for states.

Both the 2000 and 2004 counterconvention organizing strove to move beyond protest, and both captured their times.

Current Challenges

Now we arrive at 2008. The progress here is in the long view taken by the organizers, via a string of consultas, outreach tours, and transparent action frameworks. Much appears to be a step backward, however. There seems to be little thought about accounting for—and acting in relation to—this specific moment in political history. Unconventional Action—an emerging network aiming to complement the work of local organizers in Denver (DNC, August 24–28) and the Twin Cities (RNC, September 1–4)—issued a broadsheet, for instance, that says a simple no to white supremacy and patriarchy. Sure, Obama and Clinton won’t eradicate either, but for millions the viability of a person of color or female president has profound meaning in the struggle against racism and patriarchy. Moreover, the assertion in a more recent Unconventional Action broadsheet, titled “False Hope vs. Real Change,” that the color of the president doesn’t matter, seems almost willfully designed to alienate these millions, and assure that they view anarchists as anything but allies in working through the legacy of slavery, segregation, and so on in the United States.(3) It’s not that Obama is the antidote to racism; it’s that if his self-described “improbable journey” moves many, many people, we should at least be cognizant and perhaps understanding of how a president of color might matter in certain ways, at a certain time and place. One last example here is the “Disrupt the DNC!” zine, which doesn’t even mention Obama at all, thereby signaling offense through omission.4

The trick is to meet people “where they’re at” yet boldly encourage them to venture beyond “the world that is,” toward the “world that could be.” This would involve asking ourselves a series of hard questions, including: Which convention might be best to focus our efforts on? How could we approach the conventions as an explicit campaign toward something, such as mentoring future generations of radicals, linking local and global horizontal experiments, and offering visions? And how do we relate to an election that brings relief globally from the Bush era as well as hope around the idea of a black or female president?

Honest answers might lead to different conclusions about the form and content of our actions—and it’s not too late to reconsider, especially given the changing landscape. The DNC may in fact demand flexibility in our responses to questions of gender, race, and even representative “democracy,” depending on the Democratic primaries’ outcome (or fallout, or simply how various social movements choose to engage with the DNC).

This relates to our motivations. For many, the conventions appear as an elixir to revive the anti-capitalist movements of the late 1990s, or for some, even the nostalgia of the 1960s. Others feel despondent about our radical milieu or disempowered, and want to cathartically shut something down. Still others claim that since “everyone” will be protesting, we should be part of the spectacle too, and even create a counterspectacle. Sadly, one can’t wish a watershed into existence; nostalgia can blind us to past mistakes—do we really want, as Denver’s “Re-create 68” argues, “to pick up where our predecessors left off”? And in an era when states and capitalism increasingly thrive on creating spectacle, adding to it only seems to linger within the same detestable logic.

The Medium and the Message

The lack of a substantive “why” in these motivations, despite the understandable feelings behind them, is evidenced in the lack of meaningful messaging—that is, slogans and literature that grapple with this historical moment. It’s hard to express much of anything in a tagline for a mobilization or on a banner, but one thing that’s gotten lost over the past few years appears to be the desire to try. Compare this year’s “Crash the Convention” to the “Convergence against Capitalism” slogan from early 2000. The former is an empty descriptor, mirroring an empty action: blockading the RNC, essentially an expensive party celebrating a done deal. The latter phrase, conversely, holds substance: our convergences were infused with a sensibility that allowed us to reject shifts within capitalism. So when we tried to shut down the World Trade Organization, for one, we were exposing a powerful decision-making body, even as we ourselves practiced a self-organized unity in diversity, thereby prefiguring a world without hierarchy.

It is a step back that in 2008, the notion of putting out reconstructive ideas seems to be off the table. The slogans emerging so far speak volumes about the poverty of our own planning and self-understanding, and put us further out of touch with the many people embracing hope. Take such anti-convention phrases as “we’re an ungovernable mass” or we’re in the “serious business of fucking their shit up.” Shouldn’t a nonhierarchical politics assert that “we’re a self-governing society of individuated people,” or that we seriously intend to “unfuck their shit up,” humanely remaking the world, not adding to its crap?

The DNC is another story; we might face not a party but a feud. Yet even here, what will our “days of resistance” be addressing, when likely there will be many outside the convention angry over why a female or black has lost, or why the so-called Democratic Party is acting undemocratically or hasn’t adequately dealt with a variety of issues such as the war. We might just want to seize this moment of disillusionment to exhibit a “festival of democracy” that doesn’t reside in one park (as is planned) but lives daily as the very body politic by which everyone self-governs. Perhaps our actions could always combine, coextensively, the best of both social critique and social reconstruction.

What’s been lost in both these mass mobilizations is a messaging framework, precisely as a way to bind our aspirations to the action frameworks. Such a unifying slogan, though, should also tie the DNC and RNC together under a clear statement that captures why we’re all there, since as anti-statists we do see a relationship between the two: politics. Of course, for us this means contrasting visions of directly democratic politics to the hierarchical form of representative democracy. Just as self-evident, any such overarching tagline needs to be open enough to meet the diversity of political concerns that will and should be brought to the convergences. It should also, I’d argue, take as a jumping off point the possibility that can be gleaned from this historical moment. In this light, one especially apropos suggestion for a potential messaging framework, made by someone at the recent Unconventional East Coast Convergence in Washington, DC, is this: “Hope comes from people, not from presidents.”(5)
Possible Visions?

Beyond a single slogan, however, there are three areas that deserve our particular attention, and that could all provide promising, perhaps necessary ground for qualitative forms of engagement.

We could queer and trouble identity(THIS is precisely the problem. THIS sort of "private leftist language" should be the very sort of thing that anarchists-or leftists in general-SHOULD realize is off-putting to ordinary people as it is obvious evidence of an attempt to claim "superior knowledge" where no such thing exists-Molly). We strive to be antiracist, pro-feminist, and so on, but when confronted with a public debate on the meaning of race and gender expression, we remain largely silent. Part of the reason, I fear, is that we have little to say; that alone should be rationale enough for us to struggle with the meaning of race, racism, and antiracism, with sex, sexuality, and gender, in ways that are at once historically situated, complex, and liberatory. Even if we only self-educate, that would be enormous. But this moment could also allow us to act in critical solidarity, particularly with those people of color and female- or feminist-identified people who find meaning in this election. For regardless of who’s the Democratic nominee, many will be moved by this “historic” moment, which is historic within the U.S. context. Maybe it is precisely at the DNC that we can learn from those who feel newly empowered, and also offer them a truly empowering politics beyond electoralism and representation.

We could also substantively link hope, change, and needs/desires. Obama has clearly created a space for the hope that millions already hold to visibly manifest itself. We, too, should believe in the human capacity for simultaneously aspiring toward higher ideals while meeting needs—but also connect it to a revolutionary tradition. For unlike the alleged either-or of “Obama as change” or “Hillary as realpolitik,” it is essential to continually couple social transformation with qualitative improvements in daily life. Obama has done far more than we have of late to nurture people’s yearning for hope, yet he won’t fulfill that promise. And that’s exactly why we should assume that the desires for hope, change, and dealing with survival issues are genuine, and that we have much more to offer by pointing to the ways that today’s horizontalist movements are attempting to institute social freedom. We shouldn’t circumscribe hope; rather, we should work to expand its horizon, and the horizons of those who long for change.

Finally, we could encourage self-organization and participation while radicalizing the newly politicized. This focus builds on, though contrasts Obama’s community organizing style of top-down politics, which nonetheless has raised expectations. Obama comes across “as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.”(6) He speaks of the influence of the civil rights and New Left movements. We can scoff at Obama’s organization, or learn from its results and go one better. Even Obama understands that once activated, the desire to self-organize can coalesce into social movements that contest the very institutions or individuals that gave rise to the impulse in the first place. And that’s our task. To pick up where Obama’s liberalism leaves off—encouraging, mentoring, and providing mutual aid to those who soon may want to collectively struggle for a world without messiahs or masters. But this also means that we’ll need to be good community organizers, rather than merely good at countercultural projects. We could, say, counter Obama’s summer 2008 Organizing Fellows program—meant to develop “a new generation of leadership that believes . . . real change comes from the ground up”7—with our own summer 2009 Organizing Radicals camps, promoting them at the conventions, or do our own door-to-door campaigns for everything from neighborhood assemblies to noncommodified food security alternatives.

In terms of the DNC and RNC, let’s turn the tables on the spectacle. Rather than playing into it, let’s spend our time conversing with and organizing events for newly politicized nonradicals, to both listen and educate, laying the groundwork for the day when they, too, will want to break with the spectacle. This would imply that we blanket the convention cities with propaganda and projects that speak to our ethics, rather than merely our critiques. So let a million visionary flyers rain on the conventions’ parade! Let gigantic posters and “bike-in” movies depicting our dreams overlay the high-rises! If we do blockade, let’s use the action to wrap the entire convention center in banners—facing outward, with us in between—calling for face-to-face assemblies, on the spot, thereby utilizing our time together to do long-term strategizing and movement building, while publicly illustrating self-governance! Let’s show that the world as it is, already contains glimpses of the world that ought to be!

Cindy (cbmilstein@yahoo.com) is an Institute for Anarchist Studies board member, co-organizer of the annual Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, and a collective member of Black Sheep Books and Free Society in Montpelier, VT. For her essays related to direct democracy and anarchism, see http://www.freesocietycollective.org/archives/cat_cindy_milstein.html; for a longer, audiovisual version of this essay, see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3162255534532924685&hl=en .

Notes:

1. Barack Obama, “Join,” Super Bowl ad, February 3, 2008.

2. David Brooks, “A Defining Moment,” New York Times, March 4, 2008.

3. Also, as someone pointed out to me, this same broadcast has the word “bullshit” printed over a photo of Obama’s face; see http://hackasheville.com/nornc/uaftp/downloads/falsehopevsrealchangespreads.pdf.

4. This zine (available at https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/unconventionaldenver/Disrupt_the_DNC.pdf) also illustrates one of the problems with ignoring Obama. For better or worse, he inspires tens of thousands to believe that “yes, we can,” again echoing the do-it-ourselves sensibility, albeit stripped of its utopian thrust, that anarchists and others on the libertarian Left have long advocated and practiced. Rather than meeting this circumscribed “yes” with our own many expansive affirmations, as the Zapatista movement should have taught us, this zine as well as the DNC and RNC direct actions all seem to be only capable of loudly proclaiming “no.” For example, there’s a “We Vote No!” direct action planned by anti-authoritarians for August 26 at the DNC, but it would be lovely if we “voted” yes in this direct action instead to everything from self-organization and mutual aid, to a free and ecological society, and so on—as a way to start from where people are at and yet hopefully radicalize the content of their yeses.

5. Thanks here to the participant at the convergence for this intriguing slogan idea, which emerged during a “messaging caucus.” For info on the recent DC organizing weekend, see http://ecc.dead-city.org/.

6. Brooks, “A Defining Moment.”

7. As described on the Obama Web site, available at http://www.barackobama.com/.

ANARCHIST THEORY:

BEYOND VOTING:

The following essay is from the Bureau of Public Secrets, a site dedicated to things "situationist". Being as there will soon be another round of elections down USA way, the webmaster decided to repost this screed about voting.

.......................

Beyond Voting

THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS
Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”:
(1) Unrestricted freedom

(2) Direct democracy

(3) Delegate democracy

(4) Representative democracy

(5) Overt minority dictatorship
The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues — apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in “democratic” regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don’t even know who they are. . . .

In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.) If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil.

Even in the rare case when a “radical” politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few “progressive” measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come.

As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them!”
[Excerpts from Ken Knabb’s The Joy of Revolution]

SOME CLARIFICATIONS
My intention in circulating these observations is not to discourage you from voting or campaigning, but to encourage you to go further.
Like many other people, I hope that the Democrats recover the majority in one or both houses of Congress, because I think this will tend to counteract or at least slow down some of the more insane policies of the current administration (some of which, such as climate change and ecological devastation, threaten to become irreversible).
Beyond that, I do not expect Democratic politicians to accomplish anything very significant. Most of them are just as corrupt and compromised as the Republicans. Even if a few of them are honest and well-intentioned, they are all loyal servants of the ruling economic system, and they all ultimately function as cogwheels in the murderous political machine that serves to defend that system.
I have considerable respect and sympathy for the people who are campaigning for the Democratic Party while simultaneously trying to reinvigorate it and democratize it. There are elements of a real grassroots movement there, developing in tandem with the remarkable growth of the liberal-radical blogosphere over the last few years.
But imagine if that same energy was put into more directly radical agitation, rather than (or in addition to) campaigning for rival millionaires. As a side effect, such agitation would put the reactionaries on the defensive and actually result in more “progressives” being elected. But more importantly, it would shift both the momentum and the terrain of the struggle.
If you put all your energy into trying to reassure swing voters that your candidate is “fully committed to fighting the War on Terror” but that he has regretfully concluded that we should withdraw from Iraq because “our efforts to promote democracy” there haven’t been working, you may win a few votes but you have accomplished nothing in the way of political awareness.
In contrast, if you convince people that the war in Iraq is both evil and stupid, they will not only tend to vote for antiwar candidates, they are likely to start questioning other aspects of the social system. Which may lead to them to challenge that system in more concrete and participatory ways.
(If you want some examples, look at the rich variety of tactics used in France last spring.)
The side that takes the initiative usually wins because it defines the terms of the struggle. If we accept the system’s own terms and confine ourselves to defensively reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it. We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones until we put an end to it.
By all means vote if you feel like it. But don’t stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.
BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS October 2006

The first part of this text was emailed and posted during the American elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. The “Clarifications” were added in the 2006 mailing and include a few references specific to that time, but I believe that the general points remain relevant in the current elections.
No copyright.

Still more local stuff:
I'm going to be on vacation soon so the frequency of posts here will plummet. I'll check in as often as I can via internet cafes,etc and post what I can.
I'll also try and check in on the local elections here from time to time. The latest is that the business and resident opposition group to the new Oly-West hog plant in Winnipeg's St. Boniface district has signed up a number of other organizations so as to show an "united front" against the plant. The plan, by the way, has been offered all sorts of goodies from both the province and the city, "goodies" that small producer coops would never get even though they can create far more employment per dollar spent (by a factor of 10 ?) than such a plant can. With, of course, no nuisance costs to the neighbours. A hog plant comes pretty well near the top of "nuisance costs".
Anyways, the opposition group has now signed up not just the Green Party (an expected event) but also the provincial Liberal Party to their coalition. They have also signed up a number of environmental and animal welfare groups such as the 'Save Our Seine Coalition' (the Seine is the river that flows through St. Boniface), the Winnipeg Humane Society and others. Some of these organizations actually have a base and aren't just the usual lefty house of cards supported by government grants.
The opposition to the plant has begun to endorse or oppose candidates on the basis of their stand around this issue. Some candidates for city council have been endorsed, and the traditional lefty candidate for Mayor, Cerrilli (see previous post) has also been endorsed for her stand. The clownish "fashion left" candidate Hasselriis has studiously avoided the issue. An interesting sideline is that there has been some backroom wheeling and dealing vis-a-vis candidate Dan Vandal's campaign in St. Boniface. Vandal is running against Mayor Sam Katz's favourite poodle, Franco Magnifico, and he is the supposed "lefty" candidate for the ward. Behind the scenes, however, the provincial NDP government, which supports the plant and is willing to "fertilize " it with all sorts of taxpayer dollars seems to have "leaned on" Vandal to distance himself from the opposition. The opposition has responded in kind by refusing him support.
All that I can say to the latter, as an ex-member of the NDP who quit in disgust over such conspiracies and lack of principle, is "good and double plus good".
Should I have the misfortune of living in the vicinity of the proposed plant I WOULD violate the anarchist strictures against voting and vote for a candidate opposed to the plant. Furthermore I would be part of the resident/business coalition. Living in perpetual stench is enough of an incentive to violate principle. I actually like the proposal to "build in in Tuxedo" (the affluent area of Winnipeg which has lots of available space). Anyways, lucky for me I don't live in St. Boniface so I remain a non-voter.