PERSONAL:

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE STATE:

It's been many many years since I left my old home town. 48 if I count right. I left it at precisely the right time, when I was turning 13. Enough of "being one with nature". Time to get into some serious trouble. Which, of course, I found in the (cough) "beautiful" city of Regina. My purpose in what I write below is to show a life that was as "stateless" as possible, under harsh climatic conditions. A life that was endured and sometimes enjoyed by a diverse mixture of ethnic groups and not just some favoured "oppressed" group. Perhaps the town of my childhood memories doesn't deserve recording. Except for one salient feature. It was a town in an area that never had a functioning and overbearing government. Now it is true that most natives in this part of the world grew up under exactly the same conditions with the difference that they saw more of the cops than we did. They also suffered a lot more from the (triple cough) helping arm of the churches, something that simply couldn't happen in a town where there were 3 distinct churches and education was public and non-demoninational.

So let's start with the obvious ie the police. We saw the RCMP a grand total of one time in the 13 years I lived in said town. Did this mean that we were a community of saints. Obviously not. There was the usual vandalism and petty theft which the community found it could deal with far better on its own than by calling for the 'tender actions' of government. Not that the retaliation wasn't sometimes overdone, but short of cutting off fingers or toes any physical pain is preferable to being cast as raw material for socia1l workers to "reform". The one occasion where the state/government proved itself useful was when one farmer went nuts and killed his wife. He came down to the general store to surrender, and he sat there for the required hours until the RCMP felt it was convenient to pick him up.

I mention this just because it is the most obvious "state function" that comes to people's minds, right up there with firefighters and above education and health care. The point that I want to make is that many of the functions that government now performs were or are provided by other means in the not-so-distant past, Or a little bit beyond the city limits in most provinces where rural firefighting is on a volunteer basis. Many other things such as education or health care could easily be provided via cooperatives rather than government. Sometimes a person may recognize all of this but still draw the line at police and the "justice" system. It seems almost unbelievable that people could do without what radicals call "the oppressive arm of the state". It is, however, true that the vast majority of people in history have lived without police (unless you count the agents of the landlord coming to steal things), and there are those such as myself who grew up in such conditions ie it is a living memory.

This doesn't mean that I think some almost mythical revolution could abolish the need for police, courts and prisons overnight. If I were having coffee with a cop I would admit that people like him or her are needed in the near future. Yet I would also say that it is indeed possible to do without police. More than possible. It is a fact that I can remember in my own life. Yet a change in the way people in a neighbourhood act towards each other is a much more effective remedy for crime than more police even today. What anarchists, at least those in the broad majority tradition of anarchism is not a society without demands and rules. It is a society without a specialized caste who enforce such rules or in the case of our present society also enforce the rules of the more wealthy.

What anarchists propose is perhaps summed up by a very clumsy neologism ie the "smalltownization" of a society that presently lives mostly in cities. This is not some marijuana addled vision from the 60s and 70s where everyone has to "go back to the land" and "pretend" to be indpendent of the wider society. What it means is that urban neighbourhoods could grow to have many of the virtues of a small town (such as its ability to live without police) without some of the vices.

Not that my home town was any anarchist utopia by far. We were connected into the wider society by such things as electricity from Sask Power. The electrical grid came in on the same year as I was born. Before that the town had its own generator like most northern communities have even today. This was also the same year, ironically enough, that they took passenger service on the railway away from the town. I see no reason, however, why a crown corporation such as Sask Power couldn't be run as a cooperative. Many advantages actually. Similarily the Province paid teachers' salaries, something that was different from my father's time when teachers were paid by the local community. Another example of memory of a different life. We actually had a Provincial highway a couple of miles from town, but the road to town was maintained (or not) by the RM as were the dirt trails that led out to various farms.

Then, most importantly, we were connected to the wider society and hence to the state by the fact that our rural economy was built on the availability of gasoline (and also oil for the privileged few who didn't have to depend on wood in the winter). Can the universal availability of hyrdocarbon products be provided outside of the state or big business ? The answer is obviously yes as Co-op service stations are a constant feature of most of the western provinces of Canada. If it is done it is possible.

I have to admit that what I have said may seem like something conservative rather than radical, but I have to say that most "conservatives" are actually quite "progressive" in their desire to clear away all obstacles to the increase in power and wealth of the people they imagine are the "wealth creators". My vision is frankly reactionary in the desire to turn back the clock (or ahead if you like) to a different sort of politics and economy. I stand in the anarchist tradition of such people as Paul Goodman in his book 'Notes Of A Neolithic Conservative'.

More on this topic later.

CANADIAN POLITICS-VANCOUVER:

GRANDVIEW PARK; REDEVELOP OR LEAVE ALONE:

Here's an interesting quandary, or at least it is for libertarian socialists as opposed to vague leftists. Out in Vancouver there is a park called 'Grandview Park' in the East End. There's a conflict in the neighbourhood about the park's future. On the one side are the authors of the following item, Defend Grandview. On the other side are the 'Friends of Grandview Park', allied with the local business improvement association.

What do I find problematic about this--besides the fact that it is doubtful in the extreme whether any infrastructure projects in the park will do anything whatsoever to address the concerns of the 'Friends' ? Such a hope seems rather fanciful to me and one wonders about other motives. Or perhaps the rather disingenuous claim by the Defend Grandview groups that "hard drugs" are "consciously excluded" from the park ? By whom ? How ? Isn't this park located in (ahem) Vancouver ? Seems like a hard claim to swallow.

What I find questionable in all this is the way it is couched in rather simplistic "class warfare" terms. I have no immediate knowledge of the area in question. It's been many years since I was visiting Vancouver, and at the time there were indeed "islands of yuppification" in the area around Commercial Drive. Situated in an ocean of ordinary working class neighbourhoods. I also have no doubt that the process of gentrification has proceeded apace. I do however have very profound doubts about the implied idea that "only the yuppies" are concerned with certain activities that go on in the park. I actually have no doubt that the 'Friends' have broad support amongst the working class population resident in the area.

That's the crux of the matter. I may be wrong about the character of the area, and I stand ready to be corrected. I do not, however, automatically jump to support each and every 'anti-development' initiative are some are prone to do. Neither do I automatically leap in on the side of what was once known as the "lumpenproletariat" when their interests conflict with those of ordinary working class people. I am well aware that for some people such side taking is a reflex action, untroubled by any thought process.

All across the world the process whereby ordinary people try to get more control over their neighbourhoods and hence their lives is marked by campaigns to "clean up" the area in which they live. It may be (probably is) that the residents near the park have legitimate safety concerns. If I am personally inclined to take sides at all I would tend to favour the interests of say working class residents over those of say drug dealers or other criminals who actually have victims.

OK, so I'm uncertain about this one. Here's one side of the story. I'm afraid that I cannot find a website for the 'Friends' to give theirs.

GPGPGPGPGPGPGP
ON THE REDEVELOPMENT OF GRANDVIEW PARK

A group that calls themselves the “Friends of Grandview Park” has called for the park’s redevelopment. They made a presentation to the Vancouver Parks Board under the title “Reclaim, Renovate, and Reinvent.” The proposed renovations are to take place in spring/summer 2010. Without a deeper look, the changes seem like an uncontroversial proposal. The “Friends” want a “new functionality” and to “create a space worthy of acclaim and notoriety.” But a closer inspection of the group’s complaints, goals and supporters reveals their actual vision – not just the gentrification of the park, but ultimately the creation of a neighbourhood only for those who can afford it.

Who are the “Friends of Grandview Park”
and who supports them?

The “Friends” of Grandview Park are a group of homeowners who live around or by Grandview Park, and who originally formed in order to stop the serving of free food to homeless people on Tuesday nights (the Chili Wagon).
The “Friends” of Grandview Park are supported by the Business Improvement Association (BIA), which stated “The BIA supports the renovation to Grandview Park and believes it will contribute to the business development, as well as security and safety in the area.” You might better know the BIA as the organization that pays for the Fusion security guards who patrol Commercial Drive in packs of two or four, harassing buskers, panhandlers and people selling their wares in the park.

The Friends of Grandview Park’s
official complaints:

In the section below we have listed the complaints laid out by the “Friends” of Grandview Park in their presentation to the Parks Board. Following each point is a counter-point or explanation of the implications of their statements, and what we think they really mean.

The Friends of Grandview Park say…

the park is…

1. “Chronically overrun by illegal inhabitants.”

To the “Friends” of Grandview Park there are too many homeless people in the park. This statement calls out for the criminalization of poverty, or at the very least pushing the homeless out of the park. The use of the term “illegal inhabitants” to describe the homeless is doubly absurd due to the fact that Grandview Park is native land; if anyone should technically be named “illegal inhabitants” it should be the city of Vancouver.

2. Used for “drug dealing and hard drugs.”

The “Friends” of Grandview Park assume the mantle of morality police over the park, above anyone who has used the park to purchase, sell or consume any type of drug. In reality, hard drugs are consciously excluded from Grandview, and members of the community – including parents of children who use the park – use the area to sell or purchase soft drugs. Maybe you have a friend who has bought, sold or smoked pot in the park?

3. “The chosen location of illegal protesters.”

In reality, protests in the park are rare. However, what better way for people to use a park than to come together to confront common concerns?

and, that …

4. “The design of the playground encourages loitering of non-families.”

This statement is ridiculous. Parks are for loitering. What are “non-families” and why are they not allowed to use the park?

5. “The unsanctioned use of tennis courts by the bi¬cycle polo club” means that the “… tennis courts (are) no longer available for parents to teach their kids how to ride bikes.”

This – and other parts of their presentation that call for “order” in the park – illustrate the “Friends’” broader goal of assuming total control. Teaching kids how to ride bikes us also an unsanctioned use of the tennis courts. The “Friends” would like to see the park used as they see fit, rather than how others already use it – even when its current use is positive and social.

6. The park has “poor drainage”

It is true that the park has poor drainage, but it is also interesting to point out that the drainage of Victoria Park was targeted in recent renovations with little to no improvement.

Stopping The Redevelopment

The “Friends” want “to bring order, safety and new functionality to the park.” Order in the sense of control over what happens in the park. The illusion of safety through removing homeless people and eliminating petty victimless crime. New functionality through the explicitly stated goal of turning the park into a “destination for shoppers and tourists.”

We want East Vancouver to be a community where you don’t have to be rich to exist, and where we don’t criminalize our neighbours. Because the redevelopment of Grandview Park is a step towards the further elimination of the poorer people from our neighbourhood, we say

NO REDEVELOPMENT
OF GRANDVIEW
PARK!

COMMUNITY POLITICS-REGINA:

COMMUNITY RESIDENTS FIGHT TO SAVE SCHOOL BUILDING:

Regina Saskatchewan, Molly's old stomping grounds and one of the more depressing places on Earth. Yes, even more depressing than Winnipeg. There as here as elsewhere the powers that be see fit to "develop the hell" out of old neighbourhoods, and replace useful buildings with white elephants. Here's a story from Act Up in Saskatchewan about one such demolition and what residents are doing to fight another scheme. To say the least city politics back there in Canada's Siberia are just like they are here.

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Inner city school demolished:
Written by Trish Elliott
Tuesday, 04 November 2008
Herchmer Community School, once home to a community of more than 200 North Central kids and their families, was brought down with a back-hoe this past weekend. It is the first of several historic inner city schools on the demolition list. Meanwhile, a number of North Central residents and Scott Collegiate alumni are banding together to ensure 85-year-old Scott Collegiate remains standing. Participants in consultations regarding the new Shared Facility that will replace Scott report that the idea of using the existing building as a design centrepiece was never presented as a serious option, despite the surrounding community's desire to keep its heritage buildings in use.
For information and an email link to provide feedback, visit http://www.northcentralsharedfacility.ca/

ANARCHIST THEORY:

THE DESTRUCTION OF CHILDHOOD:

I am reprinting the following essay from Larry Gambone's Porkupine Blog as it expands what are often my own feelings, especially around a time of year like Halloween. Both Larry and I are old enough (and we both grew up in "the boondocks") to remember a time when children were allowed to be children, when their lives weren't regimented from sunup to sundown, when they weren't under the constant supervision of so-called adults.

My own childhood was hardly "injury free". From skull fractures, to a railway spike through the foot (hence my present Christ complex) to cutting my thumb to the bone on the neighbour's wood lathe to many other things, I hurt myself enough. Neither was it danger free, from plunging through the ice on a slough, to staying out in thunderstorms, to climbing up on a fence post and petting the meanest bull in the RM, to, once more, many other things, I seemed to be determined to make my parents pay for a funeral. But what I can say is that I actually lived a happy childhood. The operative term is "lived". I wasn't driven from school to home to dance classes to hockey practice to home again. I wasn't controlled and glared at (excuse me- "supervised") for every second of my waking life. My time was my own. I read, played, explored, imagined and fought the eternal countryside war against insects, crows and gophers either alone or in the company of other children whom i had freely chosen as my friends.

It's been decades since the majority, or even a significant minority, of children in North America have had such freedom. We adults may think we are doing the right thing by our obsession with control of our children, but are we really ? The "family values" of my childhood were hardly the sickly sentimental idea that you have to fill every second of your child's life that is so popular today, in both left and right wing versions. To speak as an old fart, back in dem days, you simply did what was right to protect and educate the kids. You had enough faith in them to leave the majority of their time to themselves.

But there again this is the voice of what Paul Goodman called a "neo-lithic conservative", someone who actually lived the small town life that the cultural right makes up fantasies about. It sure as hell wasn't the religiously governed totalitarian state that they imagine and want. Neither was it the opposite dystopia of the social working left and their school of indoctrination. It was what it was, not total freedom but a closer approach to it than any thing planned by present day ideologues.

Anyways, here's Gambone's essay. Read it, Enjoy. Try to imagine how we might once more let children be free people ie children rather than little robots enslaved to our illusions.

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The Day After Halloween:
Far fewer kids seem out on Halloween trick or treating these past few years. One more example of the decline of community. Halloween has been replaced by phony parties in the malls. Commercialism reigns triumphant once again. One aspect of this decline has been the fear generated by the media about what might happen to those kiddies roaming around in the dark in your neighborhood. Add to this the urban legends that always appear about this time – poisoned candy, needles in apples or oranges. The latter was current when I was a kid 50 years ago!

Halloween was part of communal culture. You went around in home made costume to your neighbors and got gifts from them. Back in my day and beyond, Halloween also served another function – a kind of safety valve in the community. Living in a very authoritarian and repressive society, the young were given this one day of the year to cause mischief and torment their tormentors. While aimed at adult authority in general, the holiday also served as pay back time to individual members of the community who were unpleasant to children, such as the nasty teacher or the hateful old man down the street. They would get their windows soaped or the air let out of their tires. And the kids would snicker about this for months after.

Today, for the most part, the brute authoritarianism is gone. Children now face a more sublimated kind of tyranny. Every aspect of their lives is monitored and organized. It is of course, like the floggings and denigrating tirades of the past, "done for their own good." For "out there" lurks an army of kidnappers, child-buggerers, and gang members just waiting to pounce on Little Jason and Amanda.

Somehow I doubt it is all that much worse than when I was a kid. The difference is the lack of community. With real towns and real neighborhoods, we kids knew who all the "pervs" were and avoided them. Today "the public"is too aware, but then, overt knowledge of such things as pedophilia and incest was suppressed. We kids understood and expressed our awareness through warnings about not bending over to get the soap in a public shower and jokes about scoutmasters, priests and choirboys.(Molly Note-Larry is a little bit older than me, but my father was born in 1895, so my old man had a few years on his. Old Tom used to tell us that the stories of priests and boys were current in his!!! day as a kid. Oh wow, I wonder how many centuries back this reaches) In real communities, as the late Jane Jacobs pointed out, there are thousands of eyes seeing what goes on. The sick can't get away with much.

The anonymity and alienation of suburban life has given a much freer rein to the emotionally sick amongst us. This creates fear, and fear in turn, further destroys community. The suburb is a vicious circle that eternally grinds down everything that makes us human.The only way Halloween and all other forms of communal, non-alienated activity will revive is through rejecting the American-style suburb and a return to living in real neighborhoods.

CARE FOR THE COMMUNITY: *
I've just read an interesting article in the journal Nature on the evolution of the adaptive immune system (1). Adaptive immunity differs from innate immunity in that the response of the immune system to encounters with foreign organisms or antigens depends on previous encounters. Adaptive immunity, in other words, "remembers" while innate immunity does not.
The article, 'Care for the Community' by Margaret McFall-Ngai claims that all vertebrates have an adaptive immune system along with the innate one while invertebrates rely entirely on the innate immune system (2). The presence of both immunological arms, according to the author,
"...has been thought to promote heightened resistance to microbial pathogens. But this assumption presents a conundrum-invertebrates are no less challenged by the microbial world, nor are they less able to remain healthy."
Why ? One answer is that invertebrates are small, short-lived and have many young at once ie they follow a "R-reproductive strategy" (3) to a greater extent than vertebrates do. In other words they have no need for the "long haul" system of adaptive immunity. The game will be long over before the first inning has barely begun. McFall-Nagai notes, however, that there are many invertebrates that are indeed long-lived, large and have only a limited number of offspring per year. She proposes a different explanation,
"...that adaptive immunity has evolved in part to recognize and manage complex communities of beneficial microbes living on or in vertebrates."
Complex microbial communities associated with vertebrates seem to be a shared feature of the subphylum while invertebrates have far fewer co-evolved partners (4). For instance there have been over 2,000 bacterial species found to exist as either commensal or mutualist partners of humans while fewer than 100 species of human pathogenic bacteria have been identified.
Invertebrates in contrast have far fewer "resident" bacteria. Their guts, for instance, have been shown to contain fewer than 8 residents to date. Most of the bacteria present are "tourists" from the outside world. Their innate immune system has evolved to limit the range of interactions to all but a few "welcome guests".
Three mechanisms have been suggested for how invertebrates "recognize and manage their resident microbial partners". One is intracellular maintenance where the bacteria are housed, hidden from the immune system, within cells. Another is a physical barrier such as the chitin layer of the hindguts of termites and their relatives. Thirdly, the ability of the innate immune system to recognize larger numbers of antigens than previously suspected has recently been demonstrated (5). The author concludes,
"The absence of these three strategies among vertebrates is consistent with the idea that the adaptive immune system has provided them with a different, more versatile, microbial-management strategy."
She suggests the following lines of inquiry to test her hypothesis:
a)Further research on comparative gut microbiota to test whether all vertebrates do indeed have a co-evolved microbial population while invertebrates rarely do.
b)Comparative physiology to see if these co-evolved populations do indeed always provide selective advantages to their hosts.
c)Finally, the price to be paid for this advantage. As she says,
"Is autoimmunity a collateral consequence of the bargain we have cut with microbes(6)."
Many other questions pop up in Molly's tiny feline mind. Like many other aspects of evolutionary biology, from the origins of organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts to the achievements of human societies, this is an example of the mutualist mechanism of evolution. Cooperation as opposed to competition will get you everywhere, even to multicellularity. How are interspecific partnerships first established ? What can be said to be evolving in these partnerships ? The vertebrate or the microbes ? It seems plain that the "unit of selection" is not just an animal but the animal along with its associated microflora. It gives a different twist to the idea of "individuality".
MOLLY NOTES:
*'Care for the Community' by Margaret McFall-Ngai, Nature, Vol. 445, 11 January 2007, p153.
1)For an interesting contrast between the innate and adaptive immune systems see Innate Vs Adaptive Immunity.
2)This is not entirely proven, as the author admits later in her article. A search can discover many hints of adaptive immunity in invertebrates. The argument backward from theory is from a lack of the molecular precursors of adaptive immunity in invertebrates. Their is no reason, however, that adaptive immunity couldn't evolve via separate pathways. Simple convergent evolution actually. Look up how many times eyes have evolved independently, with wholly different mechanisms, to see an example of such convergence. Also there is also some dispute about the immune system of "jawless fish".
3) For a brief description of r versus k reproductive strategies see Reproductive Strategies.
4)Once more this waits to be proven. Humans and domestic animals have, for obvious reasons, been the subject of greatest inquiry. To a large extent invertebrates are an unexplored continent.
5)Molly wonders if this isn't, in fact, a dawning realization that there may be an adaptive immune system in invertebrates albeit of a different type and with different mechanisms. It seems I repeat myself here.
6)And perhaps the mechanisms of cancer as well ? Not that invertebrates never develop cancer, but the rate may be significantly lower than amongst vertebrates. Why ?